


No Fortress So Strong

by twobirdsonesong



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AnderBros, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Romance, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 36,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not easy being an Anderson, but Cooper does what he can to be the best brother he can be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Basically backstory about the relationship between the Anderson brothers told in a series of vignettes.
> 
> This was written before the "Big Brother" episode aired, and is therefore divergent from canon in a number of ways.

It’s not easy being an Anderson. There are duties. Obligations. Requirements.  
  
Cooper Byron Anderson spent a long time living up to those expectations. He made straight A’s from Kindergarten on. He put in his hours at piano practice, at polo, at fencing. He won awards and trophies and kept them polished and gleaming and in line on his mantle. He came home an hour before curfew every night. He did his chores, said  _yes sir_  and  _no ma’am_ , and was a good son. A perfectly good son.  
  
And he took care of his baby brother.  
  
Cooper was eight when Blaine Miles Anderson came along - red-faced, dark-haired, and squalling – lungs so full of power from the first moment. He remembers the hospital, remembers his mother in full makeup and a shining pearl necklace, hardly making a sound as she grit her teeth against the pain. He remembers thinking there was no way a baby could fit in someone’s belly, especially his mother’s, who is so small and bird-delicate, but there Blaine was - crying, blood-streaked proof that it was possible.  
  
He shuffled to the edge of the hospital bed, peering over the railing at the tightly swaddled bundle in his mother’s arms. There was a thatch of dark hair peaking out from the blankets and it surprised Cooper, who’d always thought of babies as smoothly bald.  
  
“Cooper, this is Blaine.” His father’s hand had been heavy on his shoulder, holding him in place. “Are you going to be a good brother to him?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Cooper nodded eagerly and pressed closer to the edge of the bed. “Can I touch him?”  
  
“Just be careful,” his mother warned, shifting the bundle in her arms towards him.  
  
Blaine was so warm, his skin crepe paper thin and slightly sticky underneath Cooper’s scared, tentative fingers. Cooper held his breath as Blaine turned his face, winkled and red, towards the touch. Tiny fingers clenched and unclenched around air until Cooper reached out and slid his index finger against Blaine’s palm and those fingers clamped down around his with surprising strength. All the air punched out of Cooper when Blaine’s eyes opened, already the color of the tea that his grandmother made him when he visited, and sought out his face.  
  
Cooper loved his brother in that moment, loved him fiercely, soul deep, and knew he would do anything and everything it took to be the best brother he could be.  
  
Forever and always.


	2. The Leave-Taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper has to leave his brother behind.

Blaine is ten when Cooper packs the last of his cardigans into a moving box, too young to fully grasp what is happening.   
  
He sits on Cooper’s neatly made bed, legs folded underneath him and his arms tucked around his chest as Cooper moves restlessly about the room, making sure he hasn’t forgotten anything. He hasn’t, of course; he’s too meticulous and organized to leave anything behind.   
  
His restlessness runs deeper than a forgotten toothbrush.  
  
Leaving Blaine is the hardest thing Cooper has ever done. He’d gotten into all of the colleges he applied for, from Yale to Princeton, but he agreed to complete his undergraduate degree at Harvard, his father’s  _alma mater_ , with the understanding that he’ll be allowed to go off to California, to Stanford, for graduate work. As long as that graduate work is in law. It’s still California though. It’s not  _Ohio_.  
  
But Harvard means Massachusetts – at least a 13-hour drive from Ohio. As wealthy as they are, he’s not going to ask his parents to fly him home whenever his heart aches for it, and that means no weekend visits home.  
  
No Saturday mornings waking to find Blaine in his bed, nose-to-nose, breath moist against his face, waiting for him to get up and make them hot chocolate and pancakes. No nights seated at the kitchen table, working on homework assignments together: Blaine with his math workbooks, forehead scrunched adorably in concentration, pencil tapping rhythmically against the paper, and Cooper with his notes for his latest world history essay.   
  
Blaine’s pencil tapping infuriates their father, who quickly retires to his study when they pull homework out to escape the noise, but Cooper finds it soothing – sounding so much like the familiar metronome. He often finds himself typing to the rhythm in Blaine’s head, his own foot a counter-beat under the table.  
  
Massachusetts means giving up piano practice with Blaine, trying to hold back his laughter the rare times Blaine makes a mistake and smashes his little fists down on the keys, creating a cacophony of jangled notes that draws their mother into the room to see what’s going on. Harvard means ending their impromptu fencing lessons, long hours spent helping Blaine adjust his stance, muscles working hard at the unfamiliar motions, at the expense of his own practice time.  
  
It means going months, months without singing with Blaine, his baby brother with the big voice and infectious smile that breaks out across his face every time he hits a difficult note or gets the phrasing just right. It means months without dancing in front of the TV in their pajamas to Disney movies and grainy black and white musicals, far past Blaine’s bedtime.  
  
It means everything.  
  
“So you’re not coming back?” Blaine asks, still perched small and curled in protectively around himself on the edge of Cooper’s bed.  
  
Cooper crouches down in front of Blaine, reaching out and taking Blaine’s wrists in his hands, unfolding his arms from his chest.   
  
“Of course I’m coming back. It’s just going to be a while before we see each other again.”  
  
Blaine sniffs, tears coming to his eyes, clumping his dark eyelashes. “I don’t want you to go anywhere. I want you here.”  
  
“I want me here too, Blainers, but I can’t.” Cooper rises up and gathers Blaine into his arms, holding him close. His brother is still so small - dark, curly head not even reaching to his chest yet. He hopes Blaine will grow sooner rather than later; high school is hard enough without being the smallest kid in the class.  
  
“Don’t call me that.” Blaine’s voice is thick and muffled in the fabric of his shirt.  
  
“Blainers,” he whispers, because he can, and strokes the mass of curls back from Blaine’s forehead. Cooper can feel hot tears soak through his shirt and his heart contracts painfully. He can’t do this. Can’t leave his Blaine alone with their parents. All of their attention, their need for perfection and order and obedience, will get focused on Blaine - Blaine who is everything bright and effervescent in the world, who feels it all to his core and now Cooper isn’t going to be there to shield him from it.  
  
Cooper bends down and presses a kiss to the top of Blaine’s head before drawing back.  
  
“Hey,” he says, tipping Blaine’s tear-streaked face up with gentle fingers. “It’s not goodbye forever, is it?”  
  
Blaine sniffs and scrubs at his nose with his sleeve. “No, not forever.”  
  
“Here, I want you to have this.” Cooper tugs Blaine over to his recently emptied dresser and pulls out the last thing left in it – their grandfather’s silver pocket watch.  
  
Blaine’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open a little. “But it’s yours.” His eyes are dark with wonder.  
  
“I know. And now I’m giving it to you.” Cooper secures the chain to Blaine’s belt loop and tucks the watch into his pocket.  
  
“Whenever you miss me, you can take this out and it’ll be like I’m here with you.”  
  
“But you won’t be.”  
  
“But it’ll feel like I am.”  
  
Blaine’s thick eyebrows furrow as he touches the lump in his pocket and suddenly his face brightens with a thought, a realization.   
  
“Then you should take something with you. Wait here.” Blaine wiggles free of Cooper’s arms and scampers out of the room. Cooper hears bare feet on hardwood floors and then a loud  _thump_  before Blaine comes running back into his room, something bright clenched in his fist.  
  
“Here.” Blaine thrusts his hand out. In his grip is his favorite bowtie – gaudy, garish pink and too large for his body. He tried to wear it to school once, but their father stopped him before he’d made it halfway down the stairs to breakfast.  
  
“Blaine,” Cooper whispers past the lump in his throat. He can feel hot tears welling in own eyes and he swallows thickly, forcing them back. He wants to say something, anything, to make Blaine understand.  
  
“Thank you,” is what he says. “I’ll wear it whenever I miss you.”  
  
“So you’ll wear it a lot?”  
  
Cooper enfolds Blaine’s body back into his arms. “I’ll wear it all the time.”


	3. To Tell You Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine comes out to his brother.

Blaine is thirteen when he tells his brother.  
  
Cooper is home for spring break and things are tense around the house, conversations stilted, and interactions frosty. It’s Cooper’s first visit home since his grand act of rebellion.  
  
He’d turned 21 that year, gaining access to his trust fund, and with that newfound financial freedom he’d withdrawn from Harvard, from law school, from the life his father had mapped out for him since birth and transferred to Columbia for a liberal arts degree. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with it, but he knows he’s not following his father’s footsteps anymore.  
  
There hadn’t been a family Christmas that year, not for him. His parents hadn’t reached out to him, and he hadn’t bothered with them. Instead he spent it alone in the apartment he usually shared with a classmate, sneaking phone calls from Blaine the whole day and sipping from a glass of cheap red wine. He bought a tiny Charlie Brown Christmas tree and placed it in the window, but he’d never gotten around to decorating it.  
  
But he’s home now.  
  
Cooper suspects that Blaine had something to do with it. He can only imagine how often his brother had pestered their parents to have him come home, if only for a little while. How he didn’t whine, or beg, or complain, only asked, over and over again, when he’d be able to see Coop again. Cooper can just imagine his brother’s face, sweetly imploring, eyes huge and innocent and so easily concealing the machinations turning in his little head. He loves his brother so much sometimes.  
  
He’s back in his old room getting ready for bed when there’s a soft knock at the open door.  
  
Blaine is standing in the doorway wearing royal blue pajamas that are a little too long in the leg and arm for him. Cooper knows that even though Blaine has grown a bit, he’ll never been as tall as he is, or their father is. Blaine takes after his mother too much. He has her eyes, and her hair too.  
  
Cooper grins at him. “Hey bud, what’s up?”  
  
“Can I, uhm, talk to you about something?” Blaine’s cheeks are pink and he’s scratching nervously at the back of his neck.  
  
Cooper’s smile fades to a frown at Blaine’s uncharacteristically hesitant tone; his furrowed brow, and the hunch to his shoulders.  
  
“Of course. God. Come on.” Cooper sits down on the bed and pats the mattress next to him. He watches, curious, as Blaine closes the door behind him before settling down on the bed.  
  
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” he says, bumping his shoulder into Blaine’s. “I’ve missed you.”  
  
“Missed you too, Coop.”  
  
The silences stretches long and Cooper can hear every wheel in Blaine’s curly little head turning restlessly.  
  
“Jesus just spit it out or I’m going to resort to drastic measures. You’re not too old for me to tickle you.”  
  
It has the effect he was looking for and a laugh bursts from Blaine and he sags sideways against Cooper.  
  
“You can tell me anything, you know. Anything at all.” Cooper says, wrapping an arm around Blaine’s shoulders and tangling his fingers in his brother’s hair.  
  
“I know. I  _know_.” Blaine repeats it with conviction and Cooper holds his breath, waiting.  
  
And it’s true. Blaine has told him everything his whole life. He told him when he lost his sheet music somewhere at school when he was seven, and Cooper helped him replace it before their mother found out. He confessed to Cooper when he broke one of the dinner plates trying to get it to spin it on his finger. He was the only one Blaine revealed to that the reason he’d torn a hole in his pants was because he’d tried to jump off one of the apparatuses at the playground and had messed up the landing. Instead, he’d told their parents that he’d caught his pants leg on something sharp.  
  
Blaine has told him everything before, and he’ll tell him this too.  
  
“Coop, I…I think I’m gay.”  
  
Blaine’s voice is so small, so nervous that it breaks Cooper’s heart. He tightens his arm around Blaine’s shoulders and pulls him as close as he can get. He feels Blaine’s forehead press against his shoulder and he presses a kiss to the top of Blaine’s head.  
  
“I love you, Blainers,” he says fiercely, proudly.  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Blaine responds weakly, and Cooper can hear the tears in his voice. He wonder how long Blaine has been holding on to this, holding this realization about himself, this truth, deep in his heart with no one to tell it to.  
  
“Thank you for telling me.”  
  
“Thanks for listening.”  
  
Cooper wonders then how many times Blaine has tried to tell their parents something, anything, only to have them ignore him. How often Blaine has tried to start a conversation about how poorly his day at school went. How he messed up a few times at piano practice even thought he knew the piece inside and out. How each time his father probably  _hmmmed_  absently, too busy with work to really listen, and his mother just nodded  _that’s nice dear_.  
  
He hates himself in that moment for being so far away for so long.  
  
Drawing back, Cooper shifts until he’s sitting fully facing Blaine. He grasps him by the shoulders and forces his brother to look him in the face. Blaine’s eyes are bright and shining with unshed tears. Cooper is momentarily taken aback by how adult Blaine is beginning to look, how he’s losing his baby fat and his face is gaining their mother’s angularity.   
  
He’s growing up and Cooper is missing it.  
  
“I’m serious. I want you to be able to tell me everything. I want you to call me and tell me about the boy in your class that you think is cute. I want you to tell me how nervous you are to ask someone out for the first. I want to know about your first kiss. Everything, Blaine. You can trust me with everything.”  
  
A few tears spill over then, but Blaine is smiling. “You really kind of are the best brother ever, Coop.”  
  
“Yeah well, I’ve got a fairly awesome brother to practice on.”  
  
Blaine laughs a little and wipes at his face with the edge of his sleeve. “That felt good to say. Out loud.” He takes a long, slow breath. “I’m gay.”  
  
Cooper gathers his brother into another hug. He wonders when the moment is going to come when Blaine becomes too old to want to be hugged like this.  
  
“Yes you are. And I love you. Now come on, let’s go get you some hot chocolate and you can start telling me about all the boys in your class.”  
  
Blaine flushes to the tips of his ears. “God, Coop. Stop.”  
  
Cooper laughs and gets off the bed to head to the kitchen. Hot chocolate with marshmallows, an old black and white musical, and his brother. He doesn’t need anything else.


	4. What Is Part Of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper finds out about the Sadie Hawkins Dance.
> 
> Warning for implied violence.

Cooper is twenty-two when he gets a phone call from his mother that sends him to his knees.  
  
 _Cooper, this your mother. It’s Blaine. There’s been an incident. You should come home._  
  
He blindly throws a few things into a bag and rushes out of the door. He’s absurdly grateful that he never made it to California, that when he turned twenty-one and gained access to his trust fund he’d transferred out of Harvard and into Columbia to complete an education he chose for himself, because it means he’s three hours to closer to getting to Blaine.  
  
The smell of the hospital is like a slap to the face. It’s floor cleaner and bleach and linens and antiseptic and the taste of it in the air coats his tongue, makes it hard to breathe. It’s getting later in the evening and there aren’t too many people around to get in his way as he barrels for the administration desk, likely looking wild and out of control. It’s how he feels.  
  
He gasps out Blaine’s name at the nurses, tells them he’s family, and they point him down a long hallway before going back to their paperwork and their phone calls and not sparing him a second glance.  
  
He pauses outside the hospital room door (of course his parents got Blaine a private room) and tries to steel himself. His heart is hammering and his mouth tastes of bile.  _You can do this._  
  
Taking a deep breath, he pushes open the door and enters the room. His legs go numb when he sees Blaine and he has to place a hand on the wall to keep from falling over. At least he thinks he touches the wall; he can’t feel his fingers.  
  
Blaine is so very small in the bed, motionless and breathing shallowly, chest barely rising under the sheet. There’s a thick bandage wrapped around his head and his hair is dark against the stark white bandages. Cooper hopes it’s not blood that’s matting those curls down. Blaine’s face is swollen and bruised, blood pooling too close to the surface. His lower lip is split. Both of his eyes are closed in sleep, but Cooper thinks Blaine wouldn’t be able to open the right one even if he were awake. His arm is in a sling, resting awkwardly against his belly, and Cooper can see a dark, ugly bruise spreading across his collarbone and down his chest where the hospital gown doesn’t quite close. He can’t see the cast on Blaine’s leg, but he can tell the shape of it, bulky and solid, underneath the sheet.  
  
It’s all Cooper can do to not vomit on the floor.  
  
 _Blaine._  He wants to say it out loud, but his throat is dry and his lips aren’t working.  
  
“Cooper.”  
  
The sound of his own name snaps him into awareness. He looks over to find his parents standing stiffly off to the side; he hadn’t seen them when he’d entered the room. His father is in a suit and has his long coat folded over his arm, as if he’s getting ready to leave. His mother is wearing heels and a tight expression.  
  
“What the hell happened?” He demands with no preamble, no niceties, no  _hello haven’t see you in months how’s things?_  He throws a desperate hand out in Blaine’s direction.  
  
“There was an incident,” his father says flatly, as if it’s nothing. As if Blaine has a scraped knee and scuffed palms. As if it’s a fender bender and not a train-wreck.  
  
“You already said that. What. Happened?” Scenarios are running rapid-fire through his mind: car accident; hit-and-run; slipping and falling down a staircase. Anything.  
  
“Blaine was at that school dance.”  
  
Cooper nods. “He told me about it, the other day. He said he was going to go with this friend, Josh.”  
  
As he says the other boy’s name, his father’s lip curls, almost imperceptibly, but Cooper knows to look for it. He’s seen that look before and he knows what it means.  
  
“Blaine and his friend were…attacked after the dance, while waiting for his friend’s father to pick them up.”  
  
Cooper can feel the blood drain from his face and he sways on his feet. Blaine was attacked. He was  _bashed_.  
  
He thought of the call he received from Blaine the week before.  
  
His brother had been so excited about it – talking a mile a minute about how was going to go to the dance with Josh and they were going to wear coordinating bow ties. How he knew that even though they couldn’t dance together, and were really only going as friends, at least he had  _someone_  to go with. At least he would be able to look back on that night and say that he’d taken a boy to a high school dance.  
  
Cooper knows that’s not how Blaine will ever look back on that night now.  
  
Then a realization hits him and it takes his breath away. “The dance was last night.”  
  
His father says nothing and his mother shifts, switching her purse from one shoulder to the other.  
  
“Why the fuck didn’t you call me the second this happened?”  
  
Fire blazes in his father’s grey eyes then. “Do not speak to us like that.”  
  
“Cooper,” his mother says as she places a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. “We didn’t want to upset you. We know it looks bad, but Blaine is,”  
  
“He is my baby brother,” Cooper interrupts. “Nothing is more important. Nothing.”  
  
He sees the shift in his father’s face - the clench of his jaw, the way his nostrils flare just slightly, and knows,  _knows_  that his father is blaming Blaine for this. That he’s thinking this never would have happened if Blaine had taken a girl to the dance, if Blaine had worn something more discrete, if Blaine were anything but himself.  
  
He knows his father is thinking that everything would be fine if Blaine could just be different, if Blaine could be more like  _Cooper_.  
  
He’s never wanted to hit his father before.  
  
Cooper turns towards Blaine, turns his back to his parents.   
  
“You don’t need to be here. I’ve got him.” He hears the swish of a coat and the click of heels.  
  
“We’re going out to dinner," his mother says softly. "We’ll be back.”  
  
“Yes you do that.”  
  
The door swings shut with a soft, muffled  _thwump_  and Cooper breathes out the tension he didn’t even realize he was holding. It’s old habit to pull his shoulders back and lock his jaw when he’s faced with his father.  
  
Cooper pulls a chair up to the edge of Blaine’s bed and stares and Blaine’s swollen, hurt face. This close to him, Cooper can see a bit of dried blood under Blaine’s nostrils and his stomach churns, knowing that his brother’s nose is likely broken, though not so badly as to be misshapen. He wants to clean it away, but he doesn't want to cause him more pain.  
  
Unable to bear it any long, he tentatively reaches out. There’s an IV in the hand that isn’t bound up in a sling and so Cooper slides his own hand underneath it, letting Blaine’s palm rest limply against his own. His palm is cool to the touch and Cooper rubs a thumb carefully across his scraped knuckles. Blaine’s fingers have gotten longer, he notices, even if the rest of him hasn’t gotten much taller.  
  
The last time he’d sat vigil in a hospital had been a few years prior when Blaine caught a nasty stomach flu during winter break and had needed IV fluids. Cooper’s heart had stopped for a long, stomach-turning moment when he saw Blaine pass out, eyes rolling back and body crumpling to the floor.  
  
He’d looked so pathetic; vomiting uncontrollably into the pan the nurse had left for him before passing out a second time, only to sleep for thirteen hours straight. Cooper spent the night at his bedside, holding his clammy hand and wiping the sweat from his brow with a cool cloth.  
  
And the time before that was his birth, when he’d been so nervous, so afraid to hurt the tiny, squalling, red-faced infant in his mother’s arms. They’d let him hold Blaine, after he’d been cleaned and fed. Cooper had sat in one of the chairs and his father had placed the squirming bundle of blankets in his arms.  
  
 _Support the head_  is what he’d thought, because he’d read it in one of his mother’s book.  
  
Blaine had looked at him again, eyes huge and unblinking, focused on everything and nothing at all. Cooper ran a finger across Blaine’s downy cheek and giggled when Blaine instinctively turned towards the touch - red, round mouth suckling soundlessly.  
  
He touches him just as carefully now. There are going to be scars, he knows, visible and hidden, and Cooper is going to do whatever he can to help them heal. And that means he’s moving home. Back to Ohio. Back to his brother who will need him now more than ever. He can transfer out of Columbia and go to OSU. They've got excellent grad school programs. He's sure he'll get into one. And it’s only half an hour from Westerville. That’s close enough.   
  
He wonders the how Josh is, if he’s hurt just has badly, if he’s even in this hospital too. If his parents are gathered around his bed, shaking with nerves and pale with worry. He’ll ask the nurse if Josh is here and how he’s doing because he knows that Blaine will ask for him when he wakes up.  
  
Cooper stays there, hunched awkwardly in the chair, slipping in and out of a restless sleep until Blaine stirs and his fingers finally curl around his own.


	5. Worth It, After All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine tells Cooper about his first kiss with Kurt.

Cooper is twenty-three when he gets a call that changes everything for the better. At least for a little while.  
  
When the phone rings at 7am on the dot it’s not unexpected, even if it is a good couple of hours earlier than usual. Blaine has called him every Sunday morning since Cooper moved out of their parents’ house at eighteen. The cellphone number never changes, even if where he is when he answers it does.  
  
He doesn’t have to look at the caller ID to know that it’s Blaine; he knows it’s him by the ringtone. And the fact that no one else would dare call him this early, not unless it’s a dire emergency.  
  
“Christ, Blainers,” he groans into the receiver. “What gives?”  
  
“Oh hey, Coop. You’re up!”  
  
Blaine sounds disgustingly awake and chipper for such an early hour and Cooper has half-a-mind to turn the phone off and roll back into his pillows for a few more hours. If it were anyone but Blaine he would have.  
  
“Of course I’m up – I’ve got fucking Roxy Music blasting in my ear.”  
  
“You love it and you know it.”  
  
“I do not.” Cooper rolls over and rubs his palms against his eyes. They feel gritty and he regrets his late night out with his friends. He wouldn’t have had that final round if he’d known his brother would wake him up at ass o’clock the next morning.  
  
“What’s up man? You never call this early.”  
  
“Is it early?” Blaine asks, and Cooper can hear in his voice that he knows exactly what time it is. “I was, uhm, up. I guess I didn’t, uh, realize what time is was, you know?”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“It was kind of a long week, you know? Had a history test. I’m sure I did fine though. Lots of Warbler stuff going on. Getting ready for Regionals. We’re, uhm, we’re going to switch things up, a little. Kind of. I mean, uh, we’re going to try something a little different.”  
  
Cooper wonders if that something different means six-part harmony instead of eight.  
  
“Isn’t it a little close to the competition to be messing with things now?”  
  
“Is it? It’s just, uh, Kurt was saying that the New Directions are going to be writing their own songs and I just think we really need to step up if we want to win. We can’t  _not_  change, you know? The Warblers have to grow and develop and adapt and Kurt kind of pointed out that maybe I’m, uh, taking too much of the focus. Maybe.”  
  
Cooper realizes that this is going to turn into one of their longer calls and starts thinking about rolling out of bed to make coffee.  
  
“What did he say?” He asks.  
  
“That, uh, my solos are numerous.” Even through the phone Blaine sounds ashamed and chastened, embarrassed. Cooper can just picture Blaine looking down at his feet, scuffing the toe of his shoe across the floor. His little ears are probably bright red.  
  
Cooper grins and stifles the laugh that bubbles up. Of course it was Kurt, with his laser-sharp wit and no holds honesty, who was the one to tell Blaine that yes, maybe he was taking over the Warblers. Cooper knows just how talented Blaine is, knows how much he  _loves_ performing, but he also knows that the Warblers work best as a cohesive group, a seamless blending of voices, and that a standout star can have an adverse effect.  
  
“So I uh, I called a council meeting, and I suggested, well I said, that is, I proposed, uhm, a duet. For Regionals. For one of the numbers.”  
  
“And how’d that go?”  
  
“Fine. Fine. I, uh, told them I wanted to do the duet with Kurt.”  
  
Cooper bites his lip against all the things he wants to say. He also kind of wants to smack Blaine. His brother is so fucking  _dense_ sometimes. “Uh-huh.”  
  
“It’s just, you know, he’s got such an amazing voice. And earlier this week Pavarotti died and Kurt was pretty, uhm, shaken up about it. He really liked that bird, you know? And he came and sang  _Blackbird_  and it was, God, he was, uhm, he looked. I mean,”  
  
Cooper can tell by the distracted, breathless tone of his voice, the way he’s saying  _uhm_  and  _you know_  like they’re new words to him and he wants to use them as often as possible that he’s got something underneath this entire drawn out story he really wants to say and just can’t get it out.  
  
“Ok, Jesus spit it out, Warbler.”  
  
“I kissed him. We kissed. There was kissing.”  
  
Cooper can’t stop that smile that breaks out across his face.  _Finally_.  
  
“Blainers,” he singsongs and can feel the heat of Blaine’s blush through the phone.  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
“I’m getting up, I’m putting my shoes on, and I’m coming to get you. We’re going out for breakfast and you’re going to tell me everything.” He shuts off the phone before Blaine can protest and lies there for a long moment.  
  
So Blainers finally pulled his head out of his ass and opened his eyes. Cooper laughs fondly to himself and gets out of bed.  
  
Forty-five minutes later finds Blaine sliding into the passenger seat of Cooper’s car. He looks a little flushed and his clothing is far more casual than Cooper has seen it in a long time. He’s got jeans on, and a white t-shirt with a Dalton Fencing Team hoodie zipped up over it. He’s carrying a coat in his hand and for once his hair is free of all that ridiculous gel.  
  
When he buckles his seatbelt, Cooper hears a soft clink of metal and sees a flash of silver at his belt – their grandfather’s pocket watch is tucked safely in Blaine’s pocket. The sight of it makes Cooper grin.  
  
There’s a homey little diner not too far from Dalton that Cooper spent far too much time at during his own school days. He hopes the food is as good as he remembers.  
  
Blaine is silent during the short drive to restaurant, but restless – twisting his hands, tugging at his cuffs. Cooper want to reach out and grab those hands to still them.  
  
The diner is exactly as he remembers it, and Cooper is pretty sure the waitress who seats them in a booth by a window is the same one who gave him a free hamburger after he won his fencing championship his senior year.  
  
“What can I get you boys?” The waitress, Lauren by her nametag, asks them.  
  
“Coffee, a lot of coffee,” Cooper says, and he catches the little smile that flickers across Blaine’s mouth.  
  
“What?”  
  
Blaine shakes his head a little. “He knows my coffee order,” he says, voice soft and full of cautious wonder. His smile is bordering on adoring.  
  
Cooper leans an elbow on the table and rests his chin on his hand. “Oh my god you’ve got it so bad.”  
  
Blaine flushes to the very roots of his hair and sinks a little in the booth and Cooper grins even harder. There is little in the world as gleefully  _schadenfreude_  as teenage embarrassment. Especially with a sibling.  
  
“Coop, shut up.”  
  
“When are you two getting married?”  
  
“ _Cooper_.”  
  
“What are you going to name your babies?”  
  
Cooper yelps when Blaine’s foot connects solidly with his shin. Blaine’s face is bright red, but he’s laughing.  
  
“You’re the worst. The worst,” Blaine says and he runs his hand through his hair. It’s just as black, just as thick as Cooper’s, but far curlier. Cooper remembers when Blaine first starting gelling it down, after his first week at Dalton. After the Sadie Hawkins dance.  
  
He shakes himself from the memory. This is not the day for that.  
  
Cooper settles forward on both elbows now and smiles right at Blaine, all teeth and crinkled eyes. His baby brother finally made a move on the boy he’s been dancing around for months and he’s going to extract every detail he can. It’s what big brothers are for.  
  
“Ok, tell me everything. Tell me exactly how it happened. What did you say?”  
  
Blaine takes a long sip of his coffee before he starts to talk.


	6. Only the Strength We Have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine tells his parents he's transferring to McKinley. They don't react well, but Cooper is there for him.

Blaine is sixteen when his parents disown him.  
  
That summer is a long one. Blaine works at that cheesy as fuck theme park, even though his parents are actively disappointed in him, don’t ask him how his day went, and refuse to drive him to and from work. He has to ask Cooper if he can borrow his old car - the green station wagon he’d left behind when he’d first moved away. His father certainly won’t let him have the car they’d rebuilt together.  
  
His parents wanted him to devote his summer hours to his long-neglected dressage and polo practice. To the French lessons he’d always hated. Maybe even to intern at his father’s firm. Nothing had sounded worse.  
  
It is, perhaps, the first time he’s really said  _no_  to his parents. The thin press of his mother’s lips and the clench of his father’s jaw tell him just what they think of that. But it feels good, to say no, to make a choice for himself. It makes him stand taller, helps him breathe easier than he has in a long time.  
  
When he’s not working at the park, and Kurt’s not helping at Burt’s shop, they spend long, warm, lazy days together. Sometimes the nights too, when Burt is feeling magnanimous and lets him sleep on the couch in his living room. Blaine feels at home with the Hummel-Hudsons, feels comfortable in their house and at their dinner table. It’s close to the way he feels when it’s just him and his brother in Cooper’s apartment, watching old movies and eating more junk food than is generally good for them.  
  
They even go camping one weekend with Burt, Carole, and Finn, out to Grand Lake State Park. It’s just far enough away from Lima to feel like they’ve really gone somewhere, but not so far that it’s a problem when Finn realizes he forgot to pack swim trunks halfway there.  
  
Kurt and Blaine have to share a tent with Finn, but after Burt and Carole retire to a second tent, and Carole kisses their foreheads goodnight, they push their sleeping bags close together and share breath. Finn just grumbles and turns his back to them.  
  
Blaine loves the afternoons they’re rained-in during a thunderstorm. When it’s just the two of them alone in Burt’s house. He’s been around long enough now that Burt is beginning to trust him, trust  _them_  to respect the rules of the house. They do – mostly. Sometimes they watch a movie, sometimes they read together on the sofa, leaning against opposite armrests, feet tangled in the middle.  
  
It’s different, now - now that they are what they are. Kurt will suddenly glance up from his book or magazine and look at him with those bright eyes, so full of wonder and amazement, like he can’t believe Blaine is there, that it’s all real, that he’s not making it up this time.  
  
When that happens, when the very heart of him is pulled from Blaine by the heat and love in those eyes, he has to set aside his own book and slide across the sofa and hold himself over Kurt. They don’t get to do this often, not with work and class and the constant presence of other people, but when they do, when there’s time, it takes Blaine’s breath away.  
  
He spends long moments with his hands and lips on Kurt, reverently touching what skin Kurt will show. The thin skin inside his elbows. The solid curve of his collarbone. His lightly-haired inner thighs. (It’s the middle of summer and even Kurt Hummel owns shorts.)   
  
Blaine spends what time he can memorizing the sight and feel of that skin, exquisitely smooth, firm yet yielding under his touch. So very warm. Each time he saves the memory for later, when’s he alone and can’t stand it anymore. He tries to pretend the grip of his own palm is Kurt’s, but his fingertips are rougher and when he dares to look down his hand is darker than Kurt’s.  
  
It’s all part of why he can’t say  _no_  when Kurt asks him to transfer to McKinley. At this point Blaine doesn’t think he can refuse Kurt anything.  
  
Blaine knew he’d transfer the first time Kurt asked him, sitting in Cooper’s old car in the Anderson driveway after a date early in the summer. Kurt’s eyes had been huge and luminous in the dim light.  
  
 _Come to McKinley_  he’d said, with a mischievous little quirk to his mouth that Blaine had kissed away.  
  
He put off giving Kurt his answer because of his parents. Of course there are the Warblers to think about it - his friends and confidants for the last year. They’re the ones who took him in when he was lost, and fixed him when he was broken. But they will still be his friends even if he’s not in school with them, even if he’s competing against them. They’ll have weekends and school breaks. It’ll be fine.  
  
But his parents. Blaine knows what their answer is going to be and it isn’t an answer he’s going to accept.  
  
He waits until the very end of the summer to tell them. He’s already filled out all the paperwork, already explained to the Dean that although Dalton is a wonderful school he’s proud to have been a student at, and that it was everything he needed after what happened at his old school, it’s time for him to follow his heart. And isn’t that what growing up is all about?  
  
Blaine finds his parents in the dining room. His father has paperwork spread out in front of him and his mother is flipping through a fashion magazine. He wonders why they’re in here when the dining room is generally reserved for dinner parties, and why they’re in here together. His father usually works in his study and his mother spends most of her time at the house in the parlor.  
  
It feels like they’re waiting for him, actually. It makes cold sweat break out all down his back and his palms are suddenly clammy against the transfer consent forms in his hands.  
  
He clears his throat to announce his presence and waits until they acknowledge him. He hates how he already feels like he’s on trial.  
  
“Blaine,” his father says, barely sparing him a glance.  
  
“I’m transferring,” Blaine announces and he’s grateful his voice doesn’t break, even if it doesn’t come out as strongly as he’d like. He can do this. He has to.  
  
“Out of Dalton. I’m going to McKinley.”  
  
That gets his parents’ attention. His father’s eyes are a dark, stormy gray when they lock onto his. His jaw is clenched so tight it makes Blaine’s teeth ache. His mother just looks disappointed. The corners of her mouth are turned down and her fingers are laced together on her lap.  
  
“You most certainly are not.” His father is using the voice that says  _my word is final do not argue with me_  and he pushes his paperwork into a neat pile before folding his hands on top of it.  
  
Blaine’s throat is so very dry and he swallows a few times, trying to bring spit to his mouth.  
  
“I am. I’ve already spoken to the Dean. He understands.”  
  
“You’re a minor. You need our consent.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
And this is the crux of the matter. He can  _want_  to leave Dalton until he’s blue in the face but he can’t just walk out of the gates, not when he’s only sixteen. Blaine sets the papers down on the table and pushes them towards his parents. His mother’s eyes flicker down to them, but she says nothing.  
  
The silence fills the room, thick and choking. Blaine’s knees start to shake and he locks them. He’s not going to show weakness if he can help it. He desperately wishes Cooper were here to stand next to him, to help hold him up.  
  
“Please,” Blaine says finally. “I want this. I need to do this.”  
  
His father stands slowly. He’s taller than Blaine will be, but in that moment Blaine is glad he takes after his mother. Her eyes are never as hard as his father’s are, even if she’s not everything he wants in a mother.  
  
“If you leave that school for that, that boy we’re done. You are out of this house.”  
  
Blaine sways on his feet as the world grays around the edges. Blood rushes in his ears. He’d known his parents wouldn’t approve of his decision, that they’d be angry and disappointed. He figured he’d be grounded for at least three months. He never thought it would come to this.  
  
“Dad,” Blaine grips the back of one of the chair. His knuckles are white. So is his face. “ _Please_.”  
  
“You made your decision, and we’ve made ours.” His father reaches across the table and pulls the transfer papers towards him. He has a pen, silver and heavy, in his hand before Blaine can blink.  
  
“Are you standing by your decision?”  
  
Blaine is gripping the chair so tightly it hurts all the way to his shoulders. “I am.” It comes out a whisper.  
  
The papers are signed in an instant. His father pushes his chair in and touches his mother’s shoulder. She too stands.  
  
“We’ll give you a few hours to gather your things.” And then they’re gone, leaving nothing behind but the click of his mother’s shoes against the hardwood and his father’s cologne in the air.  
  
Blaine stands helplessly in the dining room for a long minute, staring sightlessly at the forms, before making his way to his bedroom. He doesn’t remember getting there, only that now he’s sitting on a half-packed suitcase, hot tears pouring down his face. He doesn’t remember calling Cooper.  
  
“Hey Blaine, what’s up man?”  
  
Blaine’s throat works soundlessly for a moment, too stopped up with tears to form words.  
  
“Blaine? Are you ok?”  
  
“Coop,” he finally sobs out. “Can you come get me? I’m at…I’m at h- at mom and dad’s. Can you come?”  
  
“God, yes of course, Blaine. What’s going on?”  
  
“Please, just come.”  
  
It takes about half an hour to get from Columbus to Westerville. Cooper makes it in twenty. His father’s car is absent from the long driveway, but the front door is unlocked.  
  
Cooper’s heart drops to his soles when sees Blaine sitting on a suitcase, hunched over his thighs, completely broken.  
  
“Blaine.” He falls to his knees next to Blaine and grasps his shoulder. His brother immediately turns into him, pressing his face - hot and wet - to his neck. Harsh, ugly, soul-deep, heart wrenching sobs wrack his body and Cooper wraps his arms around Blaine, holding him tight, holding him together.  
  
Cooper doesn’t know how long they stay there, but eventually Blaine quiets and his body sags into Cooper’s hold. His shirt is wet with tears and snot and he does not give a fuck.  
  
“Blainers, what happened?” He runs a soothing hand through Blaine’s hair, which is damp with nervous sweat.  
  
“They kicked me out. I told them I wanted to transfer to McKinley, to be with Kurt, and they kicked me out.” Blaine hiccups. “They kicked me out.” The pain, the betrayal, the  _hurt_  in his voice lances Cooper to his very core.  
  
He has so much he wants to say to Blaine about their parents, but none of it would do any good right now. Instead he stands and pulls Blaine to his feet with him. His brother looks awful – face red, eyes bloodshot, lips swollen. He must feel worse.  
  
“You’re coming home with me,” he says. It’s the only thing that makes sense in that moment.  
  
“Cooper.”  
  
“This isn’t a suggestion. Let’s get you packed up. We don’t need the furniture or anything. Just get all your clothes. I’ll get your stuff from the bathroom. We’ll steal some boxes from the basement or something. Come on.”  
  
“Cooper, I,”  
  
“Blaine, shut up. You’re coming home with me.” He grabs Blaine by the shoulders again and forces him to look into his eyes. “Ok? It’ll be a long drive to get you to school for a few weeks, but we’ll manage it until I find a new place in Lima.”  
  
Blaine is so utterly overwhelmed he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He rubs his hands across his damp face. He feels sticky and disgusting.  
  
“You keep moving for me. I can’t ask you to do that.”  
  
“You’re not asking. I’m doing it. For you. For me. For us. You’re my baby brother – it’s my  _job_  to help you, to protect you. And I haven’t done that. Not like I should have.” Cooper pulls Blaine in and kisses his forehead. He’ll make this up to Blaine somehow.  
  
“I’m doing it now. You are my only brother, and I love you.”  
  
“I love you too.”  
  
Cooper smiles a little. “Ok, let’s get out of here.”  _And let’s not ever look back_.  
  
It doesn’t take long for them to get Blaine’s things put away in the guest room of Cooper’s apartment. They don’t really unpack. There’s no point when Cooper is going to start looking for a place near Lima first thing tomorrow. He’s absurdly grateful for his trust fund.  
  
Blaine is putting some clothes in the closet when Cooper comes back into the room. He’s got something in his hands and secret little smile on his face.  
  
“I think you should have this back.” Cooper holds out his hand and Blaine old bright pink bowtie rests on his palm. Blaine is struck speechless.  
  
“Here,” Cooper says, but Blaine shakes his head, not taking it.  
  
“No, I gave that to you.” He touches his fingertips to the soft cloth. He can’t believe Cooper still has it, but he does believe it; Blaine wears the pocket watch every day. “It was supposed to be something to remember me by.”  
  
Cooper smiles. He carefully loops the bowtie around Blaine’s neck. “I don’t need anything to remember you by. I’ve got you here now. Right where you belong.”  
  
There are tears in Blaine’s eyes again, but he’s finally smiling.  
  
“Come on.” Cooper takes Blaine’s hand and pulls him to the living room. He pushes him onto the sofa and sits down right next to him, so close their shoulders press tight together. Cooper throws a blanket over the both of them, even though it’s warm enough in his apartment.  
  
They watch  _An Affair to Remember_  because Blaine loves Cary Grant, even though Cooper kind of hates it. He even leaves the movie playing when Blaine falls asleep fifteen minutes into it, his head pillowed on Cooper’s shoulder.


	7. Interlude: Talking of Michelangelo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Kurt meets Cooper, and Blaine is embarrassed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlude set before chapter 6.

Blaine is just barely sixteen and nervous.  
  
It’s not his first competition, not by a long shot. He’s done fencing and polo and dressage for years now, and a competition is really just a performance after all, and there’s no denying that he’s a damn good performer. But this is his first Sectionals with the Warblers. This is big. This is important. He is  _nervous_.  
  
It doesn’t help that the council voted to give him both of the solos. He knows he’s good; he’s not so modest as to deny that, but so are Nick and Jeff. So is Kurt. He would have been thrilled with one of the solos; he’s flabbergasted by both of them.  
  
He’s also scared shitless. It’s one thing to make a error during an individual fencing match that costs him points or the win, it’s quite another to flub a note, or miss a step, and have it deny all of the Warblers a chance at Regionals. He’s not going to be the reason his teammates, his  _friends_  don’t win this. He has to do right by them.  
  
Blaine gives it his all that night, like he does for everything. He doesn’t have it in him to half-ass  _anything_. He loves this so much - the lights, the blending of voices, the infectious smiles of his Warblers. It’s a new and unexpected thrill to look over and see Kurt two-stepping to his left. He knows how disappointed Kurt was when he’d had to tell him he wouldn’t be getting a solo this time. How the expectant, hopeful light in his eyes had faded to resignation.  
  
It had hurt something deep in his gut to put that look on his face. He thinks, he  _hopes_  he’ll find someway to make it up to him. to put happiness back into those eyes. But Kurt is next to him now. His nerves are showing more than Blaine’s, but he settles into it, begins to have fun with it, and Blaine can’t help his laugh when he sees a smile break out on Kurt’s face.  
  
He can’t see past the stage lights, but he knows Cooper is out there somewhere in the audience. And that he’s smiling too.  
  
When it’s all over, Blaine can’t help but be a little miffed that they’ve tied with the New Directions.  _Seriously how does that even happen?_ He’ll take it though. It means they get to move on.  
  
In the chaos of backstage he loses Kurt, but he finds him again in the lobby watching the New Directions as they board the bus to head back to Lima. His old friends are exuberant in their own well-deserved victory. Kurt’s back is turned to him, but Blaine knows the shape of his broad shoulders under the blazer, the intricate brown of his hair, the way he’s holding his elbows to keep from reaching out to his friends.  
  
“Kurt,” he says, placing a hand on his shoulder. It’s tense under his palm.  
  
Kurt startles and turns to look at him. He’s not crying, but his eyes are certainly misty.  
  
“Come on,” Blaine says. “I want you to meet my brother.”  
  
Kurt lets Blaine pull him through the crowded lobby towards a tall man who’s standing off the side. He’s wearing a grey cardigan with a dark shirt underneath it. His jeans are so perfectly fitted Kurt thinks they may even be tailored. Kurt blushes when he thinks that the Anderson Ass must be genetic.  
  
The man waves when he catches sight of them, a wide smile breaking out across his face. His teeth are white even from a distance. Kurt is struck by how attractive Blaine’s brother is, not that Blaine isn’t attractive, but it’s something he tries not to dwell on.  
  
He looks like Blaine, but he doesn’t.  
  
His face is more angular than Blaine’s; his jaw cuts a sharper line, though their chins square off similarly. Their noses share a shape, but the end of Blaine’s is rounded where this man’s is pointed. His hair is just as dark, but it’s wavy rather than curly - a thick sweep pushed back from his forehead. His ears are larger than Blaine’s, though Kurt would never tell Blaine that his ears are tiny, even if they are. Their mouths are the same though, turning up at the corners in a near-perpetual smile. But his eyes are blue, and Kurt wonders what side of that family that comes from, and which one of them looks more like their mother, and which one like their father.  
  
Kurt fights back a smirk when he realizes thick eyebrows must be an Anderson Family trait.  
  
He’s taken aback when Blaine practically flings himself into the taller man’s arms. He’s usually so reserved, so goddamn  _dapper_  that this sudden display of physical affection throws Kurt for a loop. He hangs back a bit, watching as the other man hugs Blaine fiercely, bringing Blaine up onto his toes.  
  
“That was so good, Blaine. I'm so proud of you,” he says, finally releasing him. “Didn’t I tell you Train was the way to go? And you doubted me.”  
  
Blaine rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah. It won’t happen again, all-knowing brother of mine.”  
  
The man shakes his head fondly and attempts to ruffle Blaine’s carefully styled hair. Blaine ducks away, swatting at the hands. There’s a happiness in his eyes, an openness, that Kurt hasn’t seen before. It warms him, and makes him ache for something he didn’t know he was missing.  
  
“Stop it,” Blaine whines, crinkling his nose in mock disdain. He straightens his blazer and tie with an exaggerated twitch. “Pest. I can't take you anywhere. Anyway, Cooper, now that you’ve embarrassed us both, I want you to meet a good friend of mine.”  
  
Kurt puts on a smile as Blaine’s brother,  _Cooper_ , turns to him. His eyes are a piercing blue as they rake over his face. He knows Cooper is taking his measure in one look. He holds his breath and hopes he’s not found wanting.  
  
“You must be Kurt,” Cooper says finally, extending his hand, and he’s got a toothy smile that Kurt has only seen a few times from Blaine. Each time it had make his stomach swoop and his heart race. It has a similar effect coming from Cooper, but for entirely different reasons.  
  
“I see my reputation precedes me,” Kurt says, shaking Cooper’s hand and internally sighing in relief.  
  
“Well, Blaine here talks about you all the time. Won’t shut up about you.” Cooper throws a wink at Blaine. Kurt is fascinated, and pleased, as a blush rises to Blaine’s cheeks, pinking his ears.  
  
“I wish  _you’d_  shut up,” Blaine mutters under his breath and Cooper just smirks at him. This must be what it’s like to have a brother, Kurt thinks. He can only hope that he and Finn develop a tenth of what Blaine and Cooper clearly have between them.  
  
Cooper catches the way Kurt looks at Blaine, his eyes flickering to his face and away again, when Blaine isn’t looking, and files it away. He knows what his brother is like, and he knows that Kurt doesn’t yet know, doesn’t understand what it is to be an Anderson. Cooper’s help is probably going to be needed here. It's a challenge he's eager to take.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr-”  
  
Cooper shakes his head fondly. “Oh god please don’t call me Mr. Anderson.”  
  
“I suppose ‘Neo’ is out then, too?”  
  
Cooper laughs, sneaking a quick peak at Blaine. He almost rolls his eyes at the Blaine is looking so adoringly Kurt. His brother really is dense sometimes.  
  
“I’m going to like you, aren’t I?” Cooper says, and he knows it true. He and Kurt are going to get on  _swimmingly_.  
  
Now it’s Kurt’s turn to flush. He’s not used to this, to people openly accepting him at first sight. To have someone look him dead in the eyes and like what they find there. It happened with Blaine though, and Kurt is finding that it feels good. It feels hopeful.  
  
“Well in celebration of your win, Blainers here and I are going out to dinner,”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Blaine interrupts. “God.” He sends an imploring look to Cooper.  _Not in front of him_. It just makes Cooper laugh again. Sometimes it’s all so worth it to be a big brother.  
  
“ _Blainers_?” Kurt mouths at Blaine, eyebrow quirked and smirking, and Blaine's flush deepens to an ugly purple.  
  
 _I’m doomed_  Blaine thinks.  
  
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Cooper pushes at Blaine’s shoulder a little. “We’re going to go grab some dinner to celebrate. You should come with us.”  
  
Kurt’s mouth drops open a little. “Oh, I, I don’t want to impose on a family-”  
  
Cooper cuts him off with a protesting noise. “Nonsense. Any friend of Blaine’s is a friend of mine. Well, except for that Wes kid. He’s dependence on his gavel worries me. Besides, I won’t take no for answer, so don’t bother.”  
  
Kurt is shocked when Cooper actually loops his arm through his own, linking their elbows. People, boys,  _men_  don't tend to touch him, not on purpose, and he spends a lot of time making sure he doesn't accidentally touch them.  
  
“We can swap embarrassing stories about baby brother here. I have so very many.” Cooper throws another wink at Blaine, who splutters and gapes adorably, before pulling Kurt away.  
  
Blaine watches helplessly as Cooper and Kurt walk off, heads bowing together, whispering conspiratorially. He knows they’re going to team up against him. It makes his heart flutter a little.  
  
 _Oh god what have I done?_


	8. Almost, At Times, the Fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine comes home after the incident at Scandals.

Cooper is twenty-four and living with a teenager. And not just any teenager, but a teenage boy hopelessly, helplessly in love.  
  
There’s a fine line he tries to walk with his involvement in Kurt and Blaine’s relationship. He’s taken on the role as Blaine’s guardian, even if it’s not legal, and that means he’s responsible for Blaine. It’s his duty, now more than ever, to guide Blaine along, to help him when he asks for it and protect him when he doesn’t know he needs it. Really, it’s always been his job as the older brother and it’s one he gladly, willingly performs.  
  
But even as the responsible adult in the house, he’s not going to be the wet blanket who says they can’t enjoy their limited time together. They’re young, they’re in love, and they’ve been good, respectful, responsible boys. Maybe too responsible, if Cooper’s being perfectly honest.  
  
They’ve taken it slow enough as far as he’s concerned. He remembers what it’s like to be so enamored, so besotted with someone that you can’t take your eyes, hands, and lips off them. He’s not going to be the one to deny Blaine that, not when it makes him happier than Cooper has seen him in years, since before Dalton.  
  
And it warms him deep in his heart when Blaine comes home from a date with Kurt, flushed and rumpled and grinning so broadly his face must hurt. He knows that look and is so glad to be able to see it on his baby brother’s face, especially after everything that’s happened to him.  
  
He hasn’t given Blaine an official curfew, but he comes home early enough. He’s a responsible young man. He gets to school ten minutes early every morning. He does his homework without being asked; he keeps his 4.0 grade point average. When Cooper has to work late Blaine has dinner waiting for him - the pots and pans already scrubbed clean and drying on the counter.  
  
He is an Anderson, even out of his parents’ house. Punctuality. Respect. Obedience. These are things that were drilled into him, into both of them, from day one. They are not lessons easily forgotten.  
  
So maybe Cooper gives Kurt and Blaine a little more leeway than someone else would. They’ve earned it.  
  
That night he sends Blaine off with a wave and a cheeky little  _have fun with your boy_. It’s a weekend and he doesn’t expect Blaine back, with or without Kurt, until late. He’s certainly not going to wait up.  
  
It’s getting on 2am when a pounding on the front door pulls Cooper from his sleep. It can’t be Blaine, because Blaine has his own keys and is good about slipping into the house without waking him and he rarely comes home this late anyway. He’s probably already in bed down the hall.  
  
Cooper opens the door, ready to verbally bitch-slap whoever is on the other side.  
  
It’s Blaine.  
  
And Cooper can smell the alcohol on him from the doorway. If there’s anything he doesn’t want Blaine doing, it’s being stupid with alcohol.  
  
“Jesus Blaine, you’ve been drinking? Do you even know what time it is? What are-” His admonitions are cut short when he really looks at Blaine.  
  
His clothing is askew, bowtie hanging limply from one hand, and he’s swaying unsteadily on his feet. There are dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and fresh tears clumping his lashes. He looks utterly miserable, inexplicably broken. It stops Cooper’s heart.  
  
“Blaine. What happened? Are you OK?”  
  
Blaine takes a shuddering breath. His eyes can’t seem to focus on anything. He’s grasping at the bowtie like it’s the only thing holding him together.  
  
“Coop. I think I fucked up,” he says in a voice thick with just barely checked emotion. “I think I just ruined everything.”  
  
Cooper reaches out to grasp Blaine by the shoulder, and the touch breaks something inside of Blaine. He crumples, right there on the front stoop of Cooper’s, of  _their_  house.  
  
“Blaine!” Cooper yells in shock, and he catches Blaine just before he hits the ground, wrapping his arms tightly around his brother’s trembling body. He drags Blaine inside, struggling a bit against his dead weight, and together they slide to the floor. The wood of the front door is solid and cool against his back.  
  
He cradles Blaine to his chest as his brother sobs, body shaking with the force of it. He smells of beer and sweat; stale smoke and the crisp night air.  
  
Cooper waits it out, rubbing a strong hand up and down Blaine’s trembling back while he clasps the back of Blaine’s head firmly with the other. He thinks about the last time he held Blaine like this - when their parents kicked him out of the house for wanting to do something different with his life. When their parents disowned him for wanting to be his own person. He hopes things aren’t always like this for Blaine, but he knows he can’t promise that.  
  
He’s not sure how long they sit there; long enough that his left foot goes numb from the way Blaine is draped awkwardly over him; long enough that his ass hurts from the hardwood floor of his entryway. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t stop holding Blaine, humming snippets of Pachelbel’s Canon in C into his hair, until Blaine shifts a little in his arms.  
  
“I can’t seem to stop crying on you,” Blaine finally mutters into the collar of Cooper’s shirt. He sounds scratchy and raw.  
  
“Shut up,” Cooper says. He squeezes the back of Blaine’s neck a little. “Are you ready to tell me what the hell happened?”  
  
Blaine nods, but he’s still not pulling back from Cooper arms.  
  
“Can you get up?”  
  
“I’m drunk, not an invalid,” Blaine says, and there’s a waspish snap to his voice that Cooper recognizes all too clearly.  
  
“And that’s something you and I are going to talk about later,” Cooper hauls Blaine to his feet and steadies him when he sways a little. “Come on.”  
  
Cooper pulls Blaine into the kitchen and sits him down at the little breakfast table. Blaine slumps in the chair, resting his elbows on the table and burying his face in his hands. Cooper busy himself with making hot chocolate for the both of them. It’s familiar and comforting and it’s helping to calm his own shaking hands. He doesn’t know what happened tonight, but he knows it can’t be good. He hopes this isn’t the night he fails as an older brother.  
  
He sets the steaming mug down in front of Blaine, who smiles ever so slightly at the heaping pile of marshmallows on top and wraps his hands around it.  
  
“You always did give me extra marshmallows,” he says, continuing to stare down at the mug.  
  
Cooper sit down across from him. “Well you wouldn’t stop whining until I did.”  
  
Blaine just snorts a little.  
  
“All right. Start talking. Tell me why you showed up at 2am and had to knock to be let in.”  
  
“Kurt has my keys. He has the car. I walked. He was going to drive us back because, because I -” Blaine swallows. “Because I drank too much.”  
  
Cooper wants to say something, but he doesn’t want to interrupt. The time for a talk about responsible drinking is not now.  
  
“We went to this club. Sebastian, he got us in. And we were dancing and drinking, well I was. Kurt wasn’t. And god, Coop, it was so much fun. He was so happy and we were dancing and everyone was gay and it didn’t matter how close we got, that we were touching. We could just be  _us_  for a few hours. In  _public_. And it was wonderful and  _safe_  and I ruined it. I ruined it.” Blaine pauses and Cooper holds his breath as a few fresh tears slide down his cheeks.  
  
“We were leaving and he had my keys. And then I, I  _pushed_. I pushed too far. God I was so fucking  _foolish_. And then I left. I walked home.”  
  
“What do you mean you pushed too far?” Cooper loves his brother, but if he’s done something irreparable, he’s going to kill him.  
  
“I, we...we haven’t,  _you know_ ,” and Blaine flushes all the way to his ears. Any other time Cooper would tease him mercilessly.  
  
“But I want to. God I want to. So badly. He’s so. I just - I love him. And I want him. And I need him. But I don’t know how to tell him that, how to show him. And we were getting into the car and he was right there, so close, and he looked so good and I just, I went for it. I told him we should just do it right there in the car. He looked so hurt, he was so hurt. And I did that to him.” Blaine lets go of the mug and covers his face with his hands. His shoulders hitch as the tears come hot and fast again.  
  
Cooper sits back. He tries to imagine his brother losing control and can’t. He knows Blaine has a temper; that he can be snappish and snarky, but he hides it so well beneath his forced gentlemanly facade that sometimes Cooper forgets. He forgets that Blaine wants things he can’t have, or thinks he can’t have, and that unnameable, uncontrollable urges rise up and push past his defenses. He needs Blaine to know that it’s OK.  
  
“Blaine,” he starts. “Let me tell you something, and maybe this is going to be the most embarrassing conversation we’ll ever have, but it is what is it.” Cooper takes a deep breath and mentally cracks his neck. He can do this, for Blaine.  
  
“Kurt loves you, ok? He’s going to understand what happened. He knows that you were drunk and that drunk boys are stupid boys. He knows this. You haven’t ruined anything. And he wants you too. He does. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes. Don’t think I haven’t seen the hickeys you two leave on each other.”  
  
Blaine doesn’t smile at his attempted joke, but the tears have stopped and he wipes pitifully at the snotty mess of his face.  
  
“The right time for you two will happen. I promise. You guys are solid. This is just one moment among the thousands you two are going to have. So what that it’s a bad one? They happen. Those moments are part of every relationship.”  
  
“I should call him. Call him right now. Tell him. Try to explain. Apologize.” Blaine starts to dig into his pockets, pulling out his cellphone, but his fingers are slow and uncooperative and Cooper reaches across the table to grab the phone from him.  
  
“No you are not. Not tonight. Not like this. You don’t want to add drunk-dialing to your list of offenses.”  
  
“Cooper,”  
  
He gets up from the table and pulls Blaine away from his untouched hot chocolate. “Come on, Blainers. Let’s get you to bed. You’re going to feel awful in the morning.”  
  
“I feel awful now.”  
  
“As well you should,” Cooper gets Blaine to his bedroom and throws his pajamas at him. “Drunk or not baby brother, the time for me helping you change your clothes has passed.”  
  
Blaine rolls his eyes as he struggles out of his shirt, but the movement sends the room spinning a little and he sways. Cooper grabs him by the arm and guides him down onto the bed.  
  
“Ok, fine,” Cooper grumbles, but he helps Blaine into his fussy pajamas and gets him under the covers.  
  
“I can’t believe you’re tucking me in,” Blaine mutters, his eyes already falling shut. Cooper pats him fondly on the head before getting up and turning out the lights. He'll grab Blaine a glass of water and leave some Tylenol on the nightstand - Blaine will want both of those things.  
  
They’ll talk more in the morning, when Blaine is sober and clearer-headed than he is now. And Cooper will make him pancakes and a lot of coffee and help him figure out just what to say to Kurt to make this right. But that’s for the morning.  
  
“That’s what big brothers are for,” he says. “Goodnight, Blainers.”  
  
Blaine is already asleep.


	9. A Wizard Song For Thee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Blaine and Kurt are kind of idiots, but Cooper helps them out. And looks the other way when they come from from West Side Story.

Blaine is sixteen when he lands his first leading role in a musical at McKinley.  
  
It had been a trying few months leading up to this moment, and they are months Cooper doesn’t really want to go through again. Cooper knows just how badly Blaine wanted the part of Tony, how he wanted to prove himself with it. Prove himself to the school and to the Glee club. He knows how Blaine hadn’t even considered that maybe his boyfriend would want the same part.  
  
Cooper never expected Blaine’s transfer to McKinley to be easy, even with Kurt there as a buffer and a lifeline. Blaine had spent his whole life sheltered in private school, with the exception of half-a-year stoically suffering insults and graffiti and spit wads to the back of the head until it escalated to the unimaginable.   
  
He knew McKinley was going to be a challenge, that things weren’t necessarily going to come easily to him, that he was going to have to work for things in way he hadn’t had to before. But Cooper never imagined that some of the biggest hardships were going to come from the very group Blaine was struggling to become a part of. McKinley wasn’t Dalton, and bullying would come, even if from the most unlikely of places.  
  
Cooper didn’t think it’d be Kurt’s own brother who would tear Blaine down so completely.  
  
Blaine never said much about it, not to him. But Cooper could see it in the droop of his shoulders, the confusion in his eyes when he came home after Glee club. And when the issue of trying out for the same part of the musical had come up, on top of everything, Cooper had heard the distinct sound of a heavy book colliding with a wall.  
  
It had never developed into a full-blown argument, in fact Cooper can’t think of a time when Kurt and Blaine had  _ever_  really truly argued, but Cooper had still been relieved to come home to find Blaine and Kurt running lines in the living room, feet tangled on the sofa, easy smiles back on their faces.  
  
It’s opening night and the auditorium is packed and thrumming with anticipatory energy. Cooper sees Burt and Carole Hummel-Hudson enter and find a few empty seats. He thinks about going to join them, but the seats around them suddenly fill. He’ll say  _hi_  after the show. They’re not incredibly close, not yet, but they’re getting closer. He and Burt have already watched a Buckeye’s game together. And Carole gives him fond looks and pats his arm whenever she sees him.  
  
Cooper spots a clump of boys off to the side dressed in navy blazers with red piping. Dalton boys. They look familiar and completely anonymous at the same time. They are all at once every boy he ever went to school with and none of them at all. Although the tall, thin one with the shocking sweep of blonde hair looks far too much like someone in his year to  _not_  be a younger brother, or a cousin at least.  
  
Cooper looks around at the rest of the crowd. People are settling into their seats, waving  _hello_  to acquaintances, shifting coats and rustling the programs in nervous hands. It’s full to capacity with friends and family, all there to celebrate the accomplishments of loved ones. Next to him should be his parents. They are not there. He doesn’t even know where they are tonight. Blaine had brought him one ticket to the show and no more.  
  
Despite the toll it’s taken on his bank account (well, his trust fund) and his educational progress, Cooper will never, ever regret transferring out of Columbia and into OSU. He will never regret driving to his parents house on an unseasonably warm, humid night and taking Blaine out of there.  
  
When the house lights dim and the curtain rises, Cooper stomach clenches. He can’t keep the smile off his face whenever Blaine is on stage. It’s so different than his performances and competitions with the Warblers. No better, just different. He plays off the rest of the cast so well. He can tell from his seat how much his brother loves this.  
  
He’s glad Blaine finally gets to do this, to express this part of his creative life. Blaine hadn’t been allowed to join the drama club at his first high school in Westerville. It was a big enough battle to convince his parents to let him try a public school in the first place.  
  
Blaine had spent the whole of eighth grade begging and pleading to be allowed to go to a public school instead of following Anderson family tradition and shipping off to Dalton Academy. There had even been graphs and flowcharts drawn in Blaine’s thick script. In the end it was their mother who’d convinced their father to let Blaine try it.  
  
The fact that he’d been bashed and forced to transfer to Dalton, where their parents had wanted him in the first place, and only proved his parents’ point.  _I told you so_  and  _this could have been avoided if you’d just done what we asked_  hung thick and tangible around the house for months.  
  
Dalton didn’t have a drama department, and besides, Blaine kept more than busy with the Warblers, with fencing, with the classes themselves. Cooper remembers what the academics were like; he was a Dalton boy too, once.  
  
When the show ends Cooper jumps to his feet with the rest of the audience, clapping and whooping his approval. He would come to this show every night for the next two weeks if he didn’t have papers to grade. He’s certainly coming to the finale show, and any night he can spare.  
  
It takes a while after the curtain drops for the cast to start emerging from backstage. Blaine comes around the corner, sweat shining on his forehead and faced flushed. He spots Cooper immediately and his face lights up. Blaine fairly jumps off the stage and jogs to him.  
  
Cooper folds Blaine up into a hug, bodily lifting him off the ground and actually spinning him around. He doesn’t care that he’s probably embarrassing his teenage brother in front of his classmates.  
  
“Oh my god Blainers that was so good.”  
  
Underneath his flush of exertion and adrenaline, Blaine pinks with embarrassment and pleasure. “You have to say that; you’re my brother.”  
  
Cooper pinches Blaine’s upper arm, causing Blaine to yelp and slap his hand away. “Learn to take a compliment.”  
  
“Pest,” Blaine mutters. He rubs at his arm and shyly squints up at Cooper. “It was good, wasn’t it?”  
  
Cooper rolls his eyes and resists the urge to hit him again. His brother works hard to exude confidence and finesse in everything he does, but he’s still just a boy who needs and craves approval. Especially that of the only parental figure he’s got left.  
  
“It really was, B.” Cooper puts his hands on Blaine’s shoulders and forces him to look him dead in his eyes. He sees the hope and the apprehension there.  _You were wonderful_. And I am so goddamn proud of you.”  
  
Blaine swallows so thickly it hurts, but he’s smiling. “I love you, Coop.”  
  
“Love you too, Blainers.”  
  
From somewhere near them a bark of laughter rings out across the auditorium and it snaps Blaine’s spine straight. His eyes dart quickly to something past Cooper’s shoulder and linger there, smile falling from his lips.  
  
Cooper turns to follow Blaine’s gaze over to where Kurt is standing halfway down one of the rows of seats, still in his Officer Krupke costume, talking to his father and stepmother. Burt has an arm thrown around Kurt’s shoulders and they’re both laughing at something Carole is saying.  
  
The love and pride and joy on Burt’s face, and Carole’s, are obvious even from a distance.  
  
Cooper doesn’t miss the longing and the sadness clouding Blaine’s eyes that have nothing to do with Kurt. He can hate their father as much as he wants, but it doesn’t help. Blaine’s expression falls even more when his eyes flicker from Burt back to Kurt, who is blushing and grinning as Carole pats him on the cheek.  
  
“You haven’t talked to him yet?” Cooper asks. He’s actually surprised. He’d seen his old car back in the driveway and assumed that Kurt had brought it over, and that he and Blaine had worked out what had happened that night after the bar.  
  
Blaine at least has the decency to blush in embarrassment, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Kurt.  
  
“I, we. We’ve talked. Sort of,” Blaine folds his arms protectively across his chest. “Just not about that.”  
  
Cooper rolls his eyes and resists smacking his brother upside his head. “Blaine Miles Anderson get your stupid ass over there and talk to your boyfriend.”  
  
“What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?”  
  
“Stop being an idiot. Of course he wants to talk to you. You didn’t see him standing off to the side during  _One Hand, One Heart_ , but I did. He couldn’t take his eyes off you, not for one moment. He was so proud of you.”  
  
Blaine closes his eyes against the wave of emotion.  
  
“Coop,”  
  
“I’m being serious here. Stop being stubborn about this.”  
  
Blaine licks his lips. “Artie’s throwing an after-party at Breadstix, for the cast and crew. We’re supposed to go. We should go.”  
  
“Then ask him to go with you. He’s already yours, Blaine.”  
  
“But,”  
  
Cooper cuts him off with a shake of his head. “Go on, get changed. Clean up.”  
  
Blaine still looks indecisive. “Will you…will you tell him? That I haven’t left or anything. That I’m still here, waiting for him?”  
  
“Of course. Go.”  
  
“Don’t let him leave.”  
  
“Blaine,  _go_.”  
  
Cooper watches as Blaine slips out of the auditorium, heading backstage, undoubtedly to change out of his sweaty costume and scrub his face clean of the heavy stage make-up. He shakes his head fondly before heading over to the Hummel-Hudson clan.  
  
Kurt looks up at him when he approaches. He seems wary and nervous. Cooper smiles at him in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. It apparently works, at least a little, because a tiny smile curves Kurt’s mouth and the worry line fades from his forehead.  
  
“Burt, Carole,” Cooper greets them with a broad smile as he shakes their hands. “Good to see you both again. Congratulations, Kurt. You all did so wonderfully. It was really amazing”  
  
“Thanks, Cooper.”  
  
“And Blaine was fantastic,” Carole gushes, reaching out to pat his forearm. “You’ve got quite the brother there.”  
  
“Don’t I just?” Cooper turns his attention to Kurt. “Blaine wanted me to tell you that he wants to talk to you before you go.”  
  
Kurt swallows and nods his head. “Oh, I, yes of course. Is he, did he say,” Kurt doesn’t seem to know what he wants to ask.  _Save me from teenage boys in love_  Cooper thinks.  
  
Cooper smiles. “He went to change. He’s waiting though.”  _Go get him_.  
  
Kurt bites his lip and turns to his dad and Carole. “I’m gonna, uhm,”  
  
Burt shakes his head. Carole is grinning. “Go on, kid. We won’t wait up.”  
  
“Don’t worry, Burt,” Cooper says. “I’ll keep an eye on the boys. I’ve got plenty of chores for them after the last time they left magazines clippings and hot glue all over my kitchen.”  
  
Kurt hugs his dad and Carole, and then he hugs Cooper. “Thank you,” he whispers in Cooper’s ear before turning and heading down the long stairway towards the stage.  
  
Cooper watches as he disappears backstage. “They’re good boys,” he says to Burt and Carole, who simply nod their agreement. Together the three of them leave the auditorium and head for the respective cars.  
  
Not long later Cooper is in his kitchen, staring at the odd combination of Thai take-out boxes and fresh fruits and vegetables that make up the current contents of his refrigerator, when he hears the front door open and then gently close a few seconds later.  
  
He glances at the clock on the wall and thinks there’s no way Blaine is home from that ridiculous Breadstix this early. He hopes Blaine didn’t somehow manage to fuck things up with Kurt even more. He loves his brother to bits, but the kid can be so goddamn dense sometimes, perhaps most especially when it comes to Kurt.  
  
There’s a soft padding of feet in the hallway and Cooper perks when he catches the distinct shuffle of two sets of footsteps. So maybe Blaine said the right thing after all. Blaine knows it’s okay for him to bring Kurt over whenever, even when Cooper’s not home.  
  
Cooper grabs an apple from the fridge, and damn if he isn’t glad that Blaine takes Kurt grocery shopping with him these days – his diet has definitely improved – and tiptoes to the kitchen entryway to see what’s going on.  
  
Blaine and Kurt are still in the dim hallway and they haven’t made it far from the door at all. Kurt has Blaine backed into the wall, one hand cupped softly around Blaine’s jaw, tilting his mouth up to his, the other under his open jacket, splayed across his waist.  
  
Cooper watches, apple frozen between his teeth, as one of Blaine’s hand slips around Kurt’s back, fisting into his coat, while the other clutches tight to the back of his head, fingers in his hair, holding Kurt in place.  
  
It’s weird to his see his brother like this, caught up tight in someone’s loving embrace. He’s seen Kurt and Blaine kiss before, of course he has. The number of times he’s come home to the two of them tangled on the living room couch, or heard quiet moans coming from behind Blaine’s closed bedroom door is getting ridiculous.  
  
But sometimes Cooper still sees Blaine as a little kid in a too-big bowtie and wild hair, sitting on a piano bench and swinging his little legs back and forth while he mimics the notes Cooper taps out for him.  
  
Here is the proof though, that his brother is growing up. Cooper is relieved that Blaine has someone his age to grow up with, to learn to love with.  
  
Cooper backs into the kitchen on quiet feet, not wanting to startle them out of this, not when he knows what they’ve been through to get here. He tries not to listen at the rustle of fabric and soft murmuring that seems to echo through the otherwise silent house.  
  
There’s movement in the hallway again, and Cooper grins when he hears the creak of the floorboards on the finicky fourth step of the staircase that leads to the second floor. He waits until he can no longer hear footsteps coming from above before he grabs some of the leftover Thai and throws it in the microwave.  
  
He’ll eat his bachelor dinner and turn the TV on, loud enough to drown out any  _noises_  he doesn’t think he wants to hear, but not so loud that the boys upstairs will be disturbed. They’re going to be embarrassed enough in the morning when they come downstairs and discover the congratulatory pancakes Cooper is going to make for them.


	10. Interlude: The World For a Toy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper gives baby Blaine his first piano lesson.

Blaine is four and he is not allowed to touch the piano.  
  
He wants to though. Blaine knows it’s not a toy. He’s been told many, many times that the piano is not a toy, nor something to be played with, which is really confusing for Blaine. Cooper talks about  _playing_  the piano all the time, but Blaine’s not allowed to  _play with_  the piano? The adults really don’t make a lot of sense sometimes.  
  
Blaine knows he’s not really supposed be this room at all without supervision. There are many breakable things in here: antique vases; heavy, ornate boxes with brass locks and no keys; old books tucked safely behind glass that he’s desperate to read, even though he won’t know most of the words in them. They are things that are not for little boys at all, or so his parents, and his nanny, tell him.  
  
But sometimes, when he knows his parents are busy, he sneaks into the parlor, and with the giddy delight of getting away with doing something he’s _not supposed to_  do, he gets right up close to the piano.  
  
It was a wedding gift from Mr. Anderson’s parents: a beautiful 92-key Bösendorfer and that’s a word Blaine struggles to say. It’s maybe the biggest word he knows. He tries to mimic it when Cooper says it; slowly, following the shape of his brother’s mouth, but he trips over the second syllable every time. He practices though. And soon he’s going to get it just right.  
  
Blaine likes to trace the bright gold lettering of the name on the side of the piano, letting his fingers trail over the intricate work, and mouthing the names of the letters as he goes. He’s learning his alphabet and he’s getting really good at it, even if sometimes he forgets what comes after ‘g’ and has a hard time saying ‘s’ without his tongue getting in the way a little. His ‘z’ looks really pretty though; everyone says so.  
  
The body of the piano is black, blacker even than Blaine’s own hair, and he can see his reflection in the polished, gleaming surface. He grins and pokes the image of his own nose. He’s careful to wipe the smudge of his fingerprints from the surface before he sneaks back out of the room.  
  
He wants to peak under the lid, the see what makes the piano work, because he can’t quite imagine how pressing down a little button makes music. But the lid is heavy, and he’s not much taller than the piano itself. Not yet. He’s not going to risk the lid slipping from his fingers and crashing down.  
  
The last time he dropped something, a teacup he snuck out of the kitchen to have a tea party with Cooper, he’d been sent to his room _forever_. He doesn’t want to know what would happen to him if he hurt the piano in any way.  
  
Would his parents take his favorite toys away? He almost has that Lego castle all put together and this time the walls haven’t collapsed in on him. Would they make him stay in his room all the time? Or would they send him away? Oh god what if they send him away for breaking the piano? He would never get to see Coop again and -  
  
“What’cha doing, Blainers?”  
  
The sudden voice scares him and Blaine jumps back from the piano, tucking his hands behind his back, as if hiding them meant he hadn’t been touching anything at all. Oh no. Is Cooper going to tell their parents he was in here? He wouldn’t do that.  
  
“Nothing!” Blaine squeaks. He’s a terrible liar though, and he knows Cooper will never believe him. He certainly didn’t believe him when he said that he hadn’t dropped the teacup, that it had  _fallen_  and he hadn’t been anywhere near it at the time.  
  
Sure enough, Cooper grins at him like he knows all of Blaine’s secrets. He probably does.  
  
“You want to play, huh?” Cooper asks, and he walks over to the piano, pulling the bench out and sliding onto it.  
  
“I’m not allowed,” Blaine protests, but he takes a shuffling little step forward, almost without knowing he does it. It’s not fair that Cooper gets to play with the piano whenever he wants. It’s also not fair that Coop gets to stay up hours and hours after Blaine is shuttled off to bed. He likes it when Cooper comes and reads him a bedtime story though.  
  
“Come here, B.” Cooper pats the piano bench and just like that all of Blaine’s hesitation is gone. Cooper scoots over to give Blaine room to scramble up next to him.  
  
Blaine is fairly bouncing with excitement. He’s never been allowed to sit on the bench before. From here the piano seems even bigger than when he’s standing next to it. It stretches out long and black in front of him, and the keys are so very white. He’s kind of afraid to touch them in case he gets them dirty. But he’s good about washing his hands so it’ll probably be ok.  
  
He looks down, to where the three gleaming gold pedals are so far below his feet.   
  
“Coop, I can’t reach the pedals,” Blaine pouts, swinging his little legs that have no hope of reaching down to the pedals for many years yet. Maybe this is why he’s not allowed to play?  
  
“Don’t worry,” Coop says gently. “I’ll deal with those. We won’t need them today. That’s for later, when you get really, really good.”  
  
Blaine grins again and wriggles in anticipation.  
  
“Here, we’ll start easy. This is C,” Cooper point to one of the gleaming white keys. “Press it.”  
  
Blaine does so, but so slowly, so carefully that it doesn’t make a sound at all. His dark eyebrows furrow in confusion and he looks up at Cooper. His pink lower lip is sticking out almost comically far.  
  
“Coop? It didn’t work.”  
  
“You have to press harder than that. Here, like this.”  
  
Cooper takes Blaine’s hand in his, and for a flash he remembers the night Blaine was born, and the way his newborn brother grasped so tightly to his finger. His brother’s hands are getting bigger, chubby and awkward, but Cooper’s are larger still, and his Blaine’s hand fits in Cooper’s palm.  
  
He takes Blaine’s index finger and presses down on the key with the right amount of force.  
  
The note rings out clear and true, rumbling sweetly through the body of the piano and out into the room, brushing against the walls and sliding against the windows.  
  
Happiness blooms bright and infectious across Blaine’s face, his eyes widening in wonder and delight. He gasps and claps his little hands together in delight.  
  
“Coop! I did that. Did you hear? I did that!” He’s beaming up at Cooper with a smile so wide his eyes almost disappear.  
  
Cooper grins and ruffles Blaine’s hair. “Yeah you did, B. That was really good. Ok, let’s do it again.”  
  
Over the next hour Cooper walks Blaine through the notes and major scales. He’s not surprised that Blaine’s attention never waivers, that he never gets antsy for something else. When Blaine wants to be good at something, wants to be  _perfect_ , he works at it until he gets there. It’s an Anderson family trait. Though perhaps it’s one of their better ones.  
  
Cooper can’t wait to show Blaine how to ride a bike, or learn to swim.  
  
He even teaches him  _Hot Cross Buns_ , and pride swells hot and wonderful in his chest when Blaine gets it on his own the third time through. It’s slow, his fingers are hesitant still, and the melody is off, but the notes are right and Blaine is so giddy he’s nearly vibrating off the bench.  
  
“Cooper I did it!”  
  
Cooper bumps his arms into Blaine’s and couldn’t wipe the smile off his face if he wanted to. “See, I knew you were going to be good at this. You’re going to be better than me in no time.”  
  
“You really think so?”  
  
“I know so.”  
  
Blaine laughs and turns back to keys, ready to try it again when their mother’s voice sounding from the doorway startles them both.  
  
“What’s going on in here?”  
  
With eerie synchronicity, the Anderson brothers look up from the keys, matching sheepish looks on their faces.  _Oh shit_  Cooper thinks. _Uh-oh_  Blaine thinks.  
  
Mrs. Anderson cocks a perfectly shaped eyebrow at them and Cooper clears his throat.  
  
“Mom, I uh, I really think Blaine should start piano lessons with me. He really likes it. He’s a natural.”  
  
Mrs. Anderson gives her elder son a long, appraising look. He’s nodding his head almost imperceptibly, as if he could influence her decision on Blaine’s musical education. She shifts her hazel-eyed gaze to Blaine, whose got his hands clasped together in supplication and the most adorably pleading look on his little face she’s ever seen – lower lip pouting, forehead scrunched - the whole works.   
  
She knows how often Blaine sneaks into the parlor and stares at the piano, thinking that no one sees him, that no one knows what he’s up to. Blaine is a lot of things at this age, but no four-year-old is subtle.  
  
“Well,” she says, and puts her hands on her hips. “Then I suppose we’ll have to call Mrs. Badcrumble and have her add Blaine to her schedule, won’t we?”  
  
Blaine whoops, throwing a little fist into the air, and scrambles off the bench. He runs to his mother and wraps his arms around her legs, burying his face in her skirt.  
  
“Thank you thank you thank you I’ll be so good at it I’ll work so hard you’ll see you’ll be so proud of me,” he rambles, voice muffled in the fabric of her skirt. Mrs. Anderson smiles warmly down at her youngest son and brushes his hair back from his forehead.  
  
“Yes I’m sure I will be,” she says. Blaine has a bowtie hanging loose around his neck, because he still hasn’t figured out how to tie it for himself. Mrs. Anderson reaches down and carefully knots the grey and purple plaid bowtie, making sure it’s perfectly straight, and smooth the edges of his collar.  
  
“There, don’t you look handsome for your first lesson.” She hugs him tightly, pressing a kiss to his forehead, before straightening up and pushing gently at his shoulders, guiding him back to the piano.  
  
Mrs. Anderson catches Cooper eye. “Make sure he takes a break for lunch, ok? You know how he gets.”  
  
Cooper grins. “Yes, of course.” He laughs when Blaine knocks his elbow into his chest in his haste and excitement to get back up onto the piano bench.  
  
 _Thank you_  he mouths at his mother, and he means it. Bone-deep.  
  
Mrs. Anderson just smiles at her sons and leaves the room, the notes of  _Hot Cross Buns_  trailing after her.

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	11. A Thousand Incarnations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine and Cooper go Christmas shopping in hopes of finding the perfect gift for Kurt.
> 
> Warning: possible trigger for childhood stuffed animal trauma.

Blaine is seventeen and he does not know what to get his boyfriend for Christmas.  
  
It should not be this hard. He knows Kurt, he does. He knows the movies he likes, the books he reads over and over, the cologne he wears (different on the weekends than during the week). Blaine knows how much Kurt likes scarves and boots and animal-head lapel pins.  
  
(He knows other things too: what Kurt wants for the future; what he frets about from the past. But these things don’t equate to a Christmas gift, even if they are the more significant things to know about his boyfriend.)  
  
This year a DVD or a book or a gift card is not going to cut it. Maybe it would have when they were still only friends and it was acceptable for Christmas gifts to be just shy of superficial. But not now, not after everything - not after prom and their first time in the warm light of Blaine’s room and  _I love you_.  
  
Kurt is worth so much more than a silly Christmas gift and Blaine is at a loss. Googling “inexpensive Christmas gifts for the fashionable gay teenager” hasn’t produced any results either. And Googling anything with the phrase “gay teenager” in it is risky at best.  
  
When Cooper gets up that Saturday morning the week before Christmas, he finds Blaine already awake despite the early hour and at his computer, camped out at the kitchen island.  
  
Blaine is sitting on one of the barstools, hunched over his laptop. He’s wearing a pair of Dalton pajama pants, one of Cooper’s old Columbia shirts, and his hair is a mess. His left knee is jittering up and down rapidly and he’s chewing on his thumbnail like he’s a starving man.   
  
“Morning,” Cooper says, casting a vague glance at the laptop, and Blaine just grunts distractedly at him before typing something out with a bit too much force.  
  
“I’m going to go for a run. You need anything before I go?”  
  
Blaine just grunts again, switching from chewing on his thumbnail to his ring finger, and Cooper takes that as a  _no_.  
  
An hour later Cooper is sweating and panting from exertion. He leaves his shoes in the entryway because it’s been snowing and there’s no way he’s leaving puddles of slushy, disgusting water all over his hardwood floors. Last time he did that he’d slipped and bruised the hell of out of his hip. Not to mention the embarrassment of Blaine seeing him fall, arms cartwheeling like a cartoon character. It’s not something he’s keen to do again.  
  
Cooper goes to the kitchen to get some water and is surprised to find Blaine still at the island, still staring intently at his laptop. The furrow between Blaine’s eyebrows is so deep Cooper’s briefly concerned it actually will stay that way.  
  
“Do you need help with an essay or something?” He asks.  
  
“Huh?” Blaine’s head jerks up. He hadn’t even heard Cooper come back. “What?”  
  
Cooper gestures at the computer. “You’ve been frowning at that thing for hours now. And it’s only 9am.”  
  
“It’s not an assignment. It’s,” Blaine taps his fingers against the keys. “I don’t know what to get Kurt for Christmas,” he says with a sigh that comes from the bottoms of his bare feet.  
  
“Oh,” Cooper puts his water down and leans against the opposite side of the island, forearms resting on the countertop.   
  
“So this is a boyfriend thing, not a school thing. Come on, tell your big brother what’s going on.”  
  
“It’s just, he’s Kurt. I can’t just get him any old thing. This is our first Christmas together.  _Together_  together. His gift needs to be perfect. And last Christmas I was a complete  _asshole_  who somehow had no idea how Kurt felt about me. I’m sure I ruined one of the best Christmas songs for him  _forever_. So this Christmas I have to make up for last Christmas.” Blaine runs his hand through his hair again and the curls stand up even more.  
  
“You know that’s not how that works, right? Christmas isn’t about  _owing_  anything. It’s not really even about gifts. It shouldn’t be, anyway. It’s about family and friends and love.”  
  
“I know that. It’s just, I want to try. I want to try and show him how I feel. About him. About us.”  
  
“Through a present.”  
  
Blaine shoots Cooper a peeved  _look_  that Cooper’s pretty sure he learned from their grandmother. “Through the thought and time and energy I put into finding it for him.”  
  
Cooper doesn’t have anything snarky to say about that. Not when Blaine looks so worried and dejected over something that should be as simple as a gift for his boyfriend.  
  
“All right,” Cooper comes around the counter and slides onto the barstool next to Blaine. “Show me what you’re looking at.”  
  
Blaine angles the laptop towards Cooper, biting his lip and twisting his hands in his lap. He’s already blushing in embarrassment at what Cooper is about to see. His leg is jiggling so hard his whole body is shaking with it.  
  
There are roughly twelve tabs open in his browser, each one a gift Blaine’s been looking at and agonizing over for weeks. The tab that’s currently open shows a watch - an 18k pink gold skeleton watch that looks to cost about $32,000. Before shipping.  
  
Cooper looks back and forth between Blaine and watch.  _Incredulous_  doesn’t begin to describe how he feels. He’s pretty sure his mouth is hanging open a little. “Blaine,”  
  
“I know!” Blaine throws his hands in the air before tucking them around his chest. “I just, it looks like something Kurt would wear though, right?” The hopeful little smile on his face twists at Cooper’s heart.  
  
Cooper can’t deny that the watch is exquisite and would in fact look lovely on Kurt’s wrist, the black leather and gleaming gold standing against his pale skin. But even when they lived at home, and their parents threw money at anything and everything they wanted, when tuition at Dalton was just another check to be signed, even then this would be a bit much for a gift. Not that Mr. Anderson had never put that much down for a watch of his own, or Mrs. Anderson for a new handbag.  
  
“Yeah but,”  
  
Blaine nods. He knew the watch was never something he could actually get for Kurt. But it was nice to imagine presenting it to him, how big his eyes would get, how his mouth would drop open. How he would wear it every day even when it didn’t quite match his outfit. And when they held hands the strap of it would rub against the delicate inside of Blaine’s own wrist.  
  
Cooper reaches out and rubs comfortingly at Blaine’s tense back.  
  
“Ok B, let’s see what other options you’re thinking about.”  
  
The other tabs contain only marginally less extravagant, but equally impossible gifts. There’s a pair of 18k gold and white gold conical cufflinks set with little diamonds around the base. They are graceful and unique. They would look gorgeous shimmering on Kurt’s cuffs. They are $13,000.  
  
“He could wear them to prom?” Blaine offers weakly at the raised eyebrow Cooper gives him.  _Or maybe our wedding_  he thinks but doesn’t say.  
  
Another tab is black silk-cotton military coat made in Italy. It is gorgeous: collarless and double-breasted with smooth, gunmetal grey buttons and a felt trim. Kurt would look even taller than he already is in, and it would certainly accentuate the breadth of his shoulders. The coat is $2,500 at the current exchange rate.  
  
 _For those cold winters in New York_  Blaine mummers to the countertop.  
  
The next is a gorgeous black Italian calfskin messenger bag that is clearly handmade. The leather looks smooth and supple even on a computer screen. This gift is a bit more manageable - the bag only costs $1,750.   
  
There’s a tie clip and a waistcoat and a severely overpriced umbrella. All them are gifts Cooper knows Kurt would love; none of them are things Blaine can afford.  
  
(They’ve never discussed Blaine’s financial situation, and as far as Cooper’s concerned they’re not going to.)  
  
By the last one Blaine has buried his head in his arms and his ears are flushed bright red where Cooper can see them. He looks so pathetic that Cooper wrinkles his nose at his back. This is not the Anderson way.  
  
Clearly the situation is far more dire than Cooper had anticipated, but he is nothing if not a good brother and he is going to help Blaine find the perfect gift for Kurt, even if it kills them both.  
  
“Come on, let’s go,” Cooper hops off the stool. He runs upstairs and throws on some clothes that aren’t sweaty running gear. He grabs his coat from the hook and his keys from the table. He jerks his head towards the front door, almost tapping his foot with impatience.  
  
“Where are we going?” Blaine still has his head buried in his arms and even muffled the way it is, his voice is comes through annoyed and petulant.  
  
“Columbus. We’re not going to find anything for Kurt in Lima.”  
  
“Coop,”  
  
“Why are you still sitting there in your pajamas? Get up. It’s a long drive.”  
  
***  
  
Two hours later finds Cooper pulling into the Easton Town Center in Columbus. It’s an enormous complex, and with its public green spaces and huge central fountain, it looks more like a small town than a simple shopping center. Cooper picks a parking lot at random - he has no idea where Blaine will want to go and he’s not going to waste time with parking.  
  
Hour after hour, store after store, Cooper trails after Blaine as he ducks into every shop he thinks might  _possibly_  carry something that would be an acceptable gift for Kurt. Cooper is astounded, maybe slightly impressed, by his brother’s ability to blow through a store in fifteen minutes and then fervently announce that nothing in there will do and that they should move on to the next one.  
  
Cooper’s fairly certain they both look like crazy people, darting around the Easton Town Center like they’re on a scavenger hunt. Which, he supposes with a bit of hysteria, they sort of are.  
  
At one point he has to grab Blaine by the hood of his jacket and pull him back from darting across the street to get from the Restoration Hardware to the Crate & Barrel. He is not going to end this day with Blaine getting hit by a car because he was too eager to bother looking both ways before a crossing a busy street.  
  
Blaine is standing outside the SunGlass Hut. His nose is almost pressed to the glass as he stares at a truly lovely pair of Bvlgari frames in the display that would certainly look great on Kurt, but probably cost more than anyone should have to spend on sunglasses.  
  
Cooper suddenly flashes to his brother as a toddler, all tiny legs and grabby hands; pants never quite reaching his shoes, bowtie more often than not askew. Their parents had them well trained as children: to mind their manners; to say  _please_  and  _thank you_ ; to not run off; to not touch what wasn’t theirs.  
  
But children are children, and one afternoon out, when Blaine was three or four, they’d passed a Build-A-Bear workshop and Blaine couldn’t contain himself. He’d squealed in delight and pulled free from Cooper’s hand, running right up to one of the windows and pressing his face and hands to the glass. He’d stared wide-eyed and grinning at the toys and colors and the other little children running around inside until his mother had come and gently pulled him away.  
  
 _Another time, dear_. She’d said. They never did go back for a bear.  
  
There’s a workshop here, and Cooper has half-a-mind to take Blaine in and make him a goddamn bear. If only to put a smile on Blaine’s increasingly downtrodden face. He thinks about saying something, but when he looks back Blaine is already walking off from the SunGlass hut, no bag in hand, and heading towards another store.  
  
Even from behind Cooper can see the dejected slump of his shoulders, the way his steps have slowed and lost the excited spring they’d had earlier. He knows his brother is loosing all hope of finding the perfect gift.  
  
Everything Blaine sees (the scarf that was almost the right shade to match Kurt’s eyes, the boots that would have gone perfectly with his favorite jeans) is either not exactly what he’s looking for, or too expensive.  
  
It’s not like Blaine doesn’t have any of his own money - he does. When he still lived at home his parents gave him a truly ridiculous allowance. But that’s his savings - it’s what’s going to help get him through college. As much as he wants to, he’s too responsible to tap into that for a present.  
  
And that means the search for the right gift is proving fruitless.  
  
“Blaine, come on,” Cooper grabs his brother’s arm as they exit the Burberry. There had been an umbrella in there that had caught Blaine’s eye (black on the outside, patterned underneath), because it reminded him of the birdcage cover Kurt had gotten for Pavarotti. But something that reminds him of a dead bird didn’t seem like an ideal Christmas gift for his boyfriend. Even if the bird’s death was what ultimately got him to pull his head out of his ass and make a move.  
  
“Let’s sit down a second.”  
  
Cooper is a young man. He’s in shape. He works out regularly and he eats somewhat healthful meals. But four hours of following a seventeen-year-old on a mission have done him in. He is tired. His feet hurt. He’s getting a twinge in his lower back. He needs a break.  
  
“We’ll grab something to eat or something,” he says, using the tone he perfected when Blaine was kid and didn’t want to be convinced that what Cooper was suggesting really was the right thing to do. “Reconnoiter the situation.”  
  
Blaine’s shoulders slump even further and he rakes his free hand through his hair. The look he shoots Cooper is equal parts annoyed and relieved. “You just love to use that word, don’t you?”  
  
“I’m incredibly intelligent. Did you know I’m a teacher?”  
  
“Of kids. You teach kids.”  
  
“Look, the Nordstrom is right over there. And the car is parked in that lot. We’ll go in, look around, and if don’t find anything in there we’ll call it a day. Go home and figure something else out. Sound like plan?”  
  
Blaine nods, and then he straightens his back and squares his shoulders, ready for one last try.  
  
The Nordstrom is full of moms with sullen teenagers in tow looking for gifts. Cooper feels an odd sort of kindred-spiritness with them.  
  
He loses Blaine briefly somewhere around the men’s shoe department, but spots him standing in front of some sort of display.  
  
Blaine is staring at a belt. It’s not just a belt, but a Hermès interchangeable silk belt. One strap is a gorgeous sky blue, the color of Kurt’s eyes when they’re alone, tangled in Blaine’s bed, and Blaine says  _I love you_. The other strap a plaid pattern, stripped with the red, green, gold, and the same blue as the other belt. It would go with any number of Kurt’s outfits.  
  
Cooper has never seen a belt that just screams another person before, but these belts are  _Kurt_ , though and through.  
  
They are also $800.  
  
Blaine reaches out and touches the belts with a desperate longing he should not be feeling for an article of clothing that holds up your pants. He saw the price tag; he knows they’re out of his reach. He won’t ask Cooper for help. He can’t. Not when he already lives under his brother’s roof, eats his food,  _wears his clothes_. He can’t ask for more. He won’t.  
  
“We should go,” Blaine says softly, withdrawing his hand and tucking it deep into his pocket. He doesn’t wait for Cooper to answer before turning on his heel and heading for the exit.  
  
Cooper looks back and forth between the belts and Blaine’s retreating back for a long moment.  
  
***  
  
Cooper doesn’t find out about the gum wrapper ring until Blaine comes home from school that afternoon and tells him, an embarrassed little smile on his face and a too-casual shrug to his shoulders. He gets the sentimentality behind the ring, he does, and he knows that Kurt will love and cherish anything that Blaine gives him. But the thought of his brother sitting on his bed, surrounded by unchewed sticks of gum, tongue poking out in concentration, fumbling with the delicate wrappers, is so perfectly  _Blaine_  that it hurts.  
  
He resists the urge to cuff his brother upside the head for being such a  _boy_  and makes the decision he already knew he was going to.  
  
The next afternoon when Blaine comes home from Glee he walks into the kitchen to find Cooper waiting for him. Cooper’s face lights up when he sees Blaine; his eyes are sparkling a little too mischievously for Blaine’s liking. He knows what kind of tomfoolery his brother is capable of.  
  
Sitting on the kitchen island is a silver Nordtrom’s box, unwrapped but with a lovely red bow on top.  
  
“What’s this?” Blaine asks, approaching it warily. He places his fingertips on the box.  
  
Cooper gives him a  _go on_  gesture. “Open it.”  
  
Blaine lifts the lid and when he sees what’s inside he nearly drops it from his suddenly nerveless fingers. His breath catches hard in his throat and he feels tears spring, fast and hot, to his eyes.  
  
It’s the Hermes belt set, the one he’d stared at for fifteen minutes last Saturday afternoon in Columbus. The one that he could never afford.  
  
“Coop,” Blaine looks up at his brother. Cooper is grinning at him and nearly bouncing on his toes. His eyes are the blue of their grandfather’s and his hair is falling across his forehead.  
  
“You can’t do this,” he says desperately. He’s clutching at the sides of the box so hard they dent, too struck with emotion to do anything else.  
  
“I already did it.” Cooper lifts a casual shoulder. “It’s done.”  
  
Sometimes Blaine loves his brother; other times he loves him so much it hurts. This is one of those latter times.  
  
“Coop,” he whispers again, past the lump in his throat. A tear escapes and slides down his cheek.  
  
“Aww, Blainers.” Cooper comes around the island and wraps Blaine up in a fierce hug, nearly lifting him off his toes.  
  
“You didn’t have to do this.”  
  
“Of course I did. You’re my brother. He’s your boyfriend. He’s family too now.” Cooper takes a tiny step back and presses a quick kiss to Blaine’s forehead. “Like you said, this is your first Christmas together. Let me help you make it perfect.”  
  
Blaine closes his eyes against it all. He will never be able to thank Cooper enough for this.  
  
“Oh my god,” he says suddenly, eyes flying open with a realization. “I really am an asshole. This is  _our_  first Christmas together. As our own little family. And I’ve been so focused on this, on Kurt, that I haven’t bothered trying to make it special for  _us_.”  
  
Cooper reaches out and places his hands on Blaine’s shoulders, giving him an affectionate little shake.  
  
“Hey. It’s ok. I know how much Kurt means to you. How important he is.”  
  
“You’re important to me too.”  
  
Cooper just rolls his eyes. “I know, B. I know. Look, I’ve got a turkey in the freezer that’s way too big for just the two of us. We’ll set the table. Use real napkins. I’ll even let you have a little wine. We’ll have our own homey little Christmas. Just you and me and 24 hours of  _A Christmas Story_. How does that sound?”  
  
Blaine’s smile is tremulous, lips quivering to hold back a few tears. “It sounds perfect.” And it really does.


	12. Interlude: Carry It With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper takes baby Blaine back to the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Cooper stares at the little plastic card in his hands. He is 15 years, 6 months, and 2 weeks old and he has just gotten his driver’s permit. It almost feels warm in his hands – glossy and newly printed.  
  
He’d completed his driver’s education classes, practiced for hours with his father whenever they had time, and aced his written test (of course he did). Now he has his permit. Now he can go anywhere he wants without needing his parents to agree to take him.  
  
He knows just what he wants to do with it first.  
  
Cooper tucks the permit into his back pocket and goes to find his mother. She’s in the parlor, tucked comfortably into one of the overstuffed, wingback chairs, reading a book. She looks so tiny there.  
  
“Mom?” He leans tentatively into the room. “Can I take Blaine somewhere?”  
  
His mother sets the book down on her lap and looks up at him. “Where?”  
  
“Columbus.” It’s half an hour from Westerville to Columbus, and it’s all freeway. Cooper’s done enough freeway driving, in the class and with his father, to not feel worried about. Not much anyway.  
  
“Why do you want to go out to Columbus?”  
  
Cooper licks his lips. “There’s something I want to get for Blaine. I think he’d really like it. I want him to come with me.”  
  
Mrs. Anderson levels her eldest son a long and serious look. “He’s too young,” she says finally. “You’re too young.”  
  
“Please? I watch him all the time. Let me take him, please? I have something really special in mind.”  _Please let me do this for him when you wouldn’t_  he thinks.  
  
“All right. But I expect you back before dark.”  
  
“Of course.” Cooper crosses the room and presses a quick kiss to his mother’s cheek. She smells of lilacs and tea. “Thank you.”  
  
“Be careful with him,” his mother says as he’s leaving the parlor.  
  
“I always am.”  
  
***  
  
Cooper finds Blaine in his bedroom. He’s standing on his bed, holding an advance-lunge pose, practice foil in hand. The point of the foil is pressed to his headboard and he has a bright look of triumph on his face.  
  
“Well done, good sir,” Cooper says, clapping lightly, and Blaine jumps in surprise, almost tripping over his bedsheets.  
  
“I’m getting better Coop!” He announces proudly, jumping up and down a little even though he knows he’s not supposed to.  
  
“I’m going to have to challenge you to a duel then.”  
  
Blaine grins and brandishes the practice foil at him in a way that might have been threatening if he wasn’t seven and wearing a pillowcase as a cape.  
  
“I accept your challenge,” Blaine says with a roguish lilt to his voice Cooper knows he learned from all those Errol Flynn movies they’ve been watching.  
  
Cooper sketches a quick bow at Blaine, who returns it. “Another time, B. I want to take you somewhere today.”  
  
“Where are we going?”  
  
“It’s a surprise. Take off your cape and grab some shoes. We’re going out, Blainers, just you and me, kid.”  
  
Blaine whoops, jumping off the bed with a flurry of limbs and discarded pillowcase cape, and the smile on his face is all crinkled eyes and missing teeth.  
  
***  
  
The Build-A-Bear Workshop at the Easton Town Center is everything that Cooper imagined.  
  
It’s huge and bright, all primary colors and exaggerated angles, loud with the excited squeals and chattering of kids and their parents.  
  
“Do you remember?” Cooper asks, as he and Blaine walk into the store, Blaine’s little hand clasped firmly in his own.   
  
“We were here a little while ago? And you wanted to make a bear, but we didn’t have time.”  _Our parents didn’t have time_  Cooper doesn’t tell him.  
  
Blaine’s eyes are huge and almost green in the florescent lighting of the workshop. “I get to make my own bear?” He asks with a child’s easy wonder. Cooper forgets sometimes, with how mature Blaine is for his age (pillowcase cape notwithstanding) that his brother is still a little kid and he gets excited about all those things that enrapture little kids.  
  
“You get to make your own anything you want. They have puppies and kittens and monkeys and turtles. Anything. What about a kitten? You like kittens.”  
  
“No. I want a bear,” Blaine announces resolutely, setting his jaw. “We should both have bears. So the bears can be brothers too.”  
  
Cooper’s heart clenches in his chest, but it’s a good kind of pain. He squeezes Blaine’s hand a little tighter.  
  
“Brother bears it is.”  
  
They spend the next half-hour putting their bears together. Cooper is a little weirded out when he has to stuff a satin heart into the empty shell of the bear, but Blaine seems to love it. He spends a full minute carefully arranging the heart, making sure it sits just right.  
  
They both laugh when the staff takes their bears for a “bath” in an airstream.  
  
“But there’s no water,” Blaine whispers to Cooper, tugging a little on his sleeve. Cooper just grins and shrugs at him. He doesn’t get it either.  
  
Cooper dresses his bear in dark pants, a button-down shirt, and a bright pink bowtie. He would give it bushier eyebrows if it were an option.  
  
Blaine puts his bear in a pair of jeans and an Ohio State University t-shirt. (Cooper isn’t going to tell him that he’s not staying in Ohio for college. Now’s not the time.) Blaine shoves a pair of sunglasses on top of the bear’s head to complete the look.  
  
“What are you going to name yours?” Cooper asks when they’re done and getting birth certificates printed out.  
  
“Coop, of course,” Blaine states, as if there were no other option.  
  
“Then I’m naming my Blainers.”  
  
Blaine crinkles his nose up at him, but he’s clutching his newly named Coop-bear to his chest. “Fine.”  
  
Cooper pays for the bears with his allowance money. They really are overpriced, but he doesn’t have much that he buys from himself. And his parents really do give him too much for a weekly allowance. Not that he’s going to complain about it.  
  
“Do you want to get some ice cream before we go home?”  
  
Blaine has his bear still clutched to his chest. He looks up at Cooper. “But mom and dad don’t like it when we have ice cream before dinner.”  
  
“Yeah but they aren’t here, are they?” Cooper winks at him conspiratorially.  
  
Blaine grins up at him and Cooper stifles a laugh at the gaps in his smile, where the baby teeth have fallen out and the adult teeth haven’t quite come in. “We won’t tell them.”   
  
“Not a word.” Cooper holds out his free hand and Blaine takes it. He doesn’t care that he’s about to walk through the Easton Town Center carrying a teddy bear wearing a bowtie under one arm. He’ll do anything to keep that open, contented look on his little brother’s face.  
  
***  
  
Years later, Kurt Hummel is exploring Blaine Anderson’s bedroom in Cooper’s house in Lima. Blaine is curled up on his bed, watching Kurt as he makes a slow circuit around his room. Touching this. Picking up that. It feels good to have Kurt comfortable in his room.  
  
“Blaine?” Kurt asks suddenly, standing in front of Blaine’s closet.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What’s this?” He turns around and he’s holding a teddy bear. It’s wearing an Ohio State University shirt. Blaine grins.  
  
“Come over here. Let me tell you a little story.”

 

 


	13. Bends To What Asks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper handles the aftermath of the Slushie Incident.

Cooper is twenty-five when his phone rings with Kurt Hummel’s name on the caller ID.  
  
“Cooper? This is Kurt. There’s been - it’s Blaine. There’s been a...an incident.” Kurt’s voice is shaking, scared, and Cooper’s heart drops to his shoes right then and there.  _It’s Blaine._  
  
“We’re taking him to the ER. You need to come.”  
  
 _Not again_  Cooper thinks desperately over the roaring in his ears and the pounding of his heart.  
  
Cooper doesn’t remember the drive to the hospital. Doesn’t remember hanging up on Kurt, getting his coat and keys, and breaking every speed limit law in Lima, Ohio.  
  
Cooper doesn’t see the group of teenagers hovering in the waiting area as he rushes through the doors of the ER to the reception desk. This isn’t the same hospital as  _before_ , but all ERs are the same, and the cloying antiseptic smell of it is a sense-memory so strong he almost stumbles to his knees with it.  
  
“Where is my brother?” He gasps at the nurse, hands clutching at the desk to keep himself upright. “Blaine. Blaine Anderson. I was told he was brought here. I need to see him. Now.”  
  
“Are you his legal guardian?” The nurse asks, calmly, professionally, as he’s done thousands of times. But it’s all Cooper can do not to grab the young man by his shoulders and shake him.  
  
“I’m family. I’m his family. What does it matter?”  
  
The nurse at least has the decency to look sympathetic. “Sir, the patient is still a minor. We need his legal guardian for the paperwork, and the insurance.”  
  
Cooper reaches into his pocket and digs an insurance card out of his wallet. His hands are shaking so badly he’s surprised he doesn’t drop it. “He lives with me. I’m his, his guardian. Please. I need to see him. Please.”  
  
 _You don’t understand. I can’t do this again._  
  
The nurse takes his card and does something incomprehensible with a computer before pointing Cooper towards bed 6. Cooper at least remembers to say  _thank you_  before he’s pushing away from the desk and crossing the tiled floor towards Blaine.  
  
He’s not in a private room this time, just around a curtain in the corner of the ER. Cooper can tell which bed is Blaine’s before he gets there because Burt and Carole Hudson-Hummel are standing around it. Burt has his arm firmly around Carole’s shoulders and both of them are wearing matching worried looks. They look up as he approaches. Neither of them are crying, and Cooper takes that as a good sign.  
  
Cooper takes a deep breath as he comes fully around the curtain.  
  
He stops dead, shocked into stillness at the sight of Blaine, his baby brother, the person he is supposed to guard and protect, once more in a hospital bed.  
  
Blaine is sitting up this time, conscious, but his right eye is covered by a thick padding of gauze held in place by tape. His other eye is bloodshot and so swollen he can hardly keep it open. There is a wash of red spilling down his white t-shirt, a dark stain, and bile rises hot and swift to Cooper’s mouth.  
  
 _That cannot be blood oh god it looks like blood._  
  
And suddenly Cooper is right back to two years ago.  
  
Back to Blaine’s broken body lying motionless in a hospital bed just like this one. The titanium screws in his leg. The jagged pink scar near his spine where a broken bottle dug almost too deep. His dislocated shoulder; the damaged nerves. The pale line of a scar on his scalp hidden by the sweep of his hair. The blood that was under his broken nose. The bruises that took weeks to fade, and those that never quite healed.  
  
Cooper makes a broken, distressed noise from somewhere deep in his soul.  
  
 _Not the same not the same not the same._  
  
“Hey, Coop,” Blaine says softly, almost like he’s coaxing a skittish dog into coming inside from the rain.  
  
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”  
  
Blaine’s good eye closes briefly against the wash of emotion. Trust his brother to make a joke at a time like this.  
  
“Cooper,” he whispers and his voice is thick with tears.  
  
Cooper comes to the edge of the bed. This close the sickly sweet smell of whatever is on his shirt is almost nauseating. He swallows reflexively. He can hear Burt and Carole shifting behind him. He is thankful they’re here too.  
  
Kurt is sitting on Blaine’s bedside, on his left where Blaine can see him. He’s holding Blaine’s hand tightly between his own, thumb stroking rhythmically over his knuckles, and Cooper can see just how red Kurt’s own eyes are.  
  
“Are you ok?” Cooper asks, reaching out and placing a gentle hand on Blaine’s shoulder. His good one. Not the one that sometimes aches in the morning, sending a cold tingling down his arm to his fingertips.  
  
“I’m fine, Coop. I am. It’s...it’s going to be fine.”  
  
Cooper searches Blaine’s face. In the set of Blaine’s jaw, the twitch of his mouth, the deep furrow of his brow, Cooper can see the pain. He can see the hurt and the worry. Blaine is trying to hide it, to be brave for the both of them, but his brother is scared.  
  
Blaine remembers too.  
  
Cooper nods. They will talk about this later. When Blaine isn’t putting on a brave, stoic front for Burt and Carole. Maybe even for Kurt. Cooper gives Blaine’s shoulder another gentle squeeze before he looks over to Kurt.  
  
He has his eyes cast down to where he’s holding Blaine’s hand tightly in his own. He seems to be watching the rhythmic sweep of his thumb across Blaine’s knuckles. Cooper would be surprised if he’s actually seeing anything at all.  
  
“Are you ok?” Cooper suddenly asks Kurt, and the other boy jerks a little in surprise.  
  
“Me? Oh god, I’m fine. Nothing happened to me,” Kurt pulls Blaine’s hand to his chest and presses it there. He doesn’t seem to do it consciously. “He, Blaine he pushed me out of the way.”  
  
“No, Kurt, I mean are you ok?”  
  
Kurt looks from Cooper back to Blaine. “I’m...I will be.” His eyes are red, but dry.  
  
Blaine smiles, a little sadly, and leans in to press a soft, chaste kiss to the corner of Kurt’s mouth.  
  
“So,” Cooper puts his hands on his hips. “Which one of you is going to tell me just whose ass I’m going to be kicking?”  
  
“Don’t,” Blaine starts to say, but Kurt interrupts.  
  
“It was Sebastian,” Kurt says, and his voice is harder, colder than Cooper has ever heard it before. It’s a little scary, and Cooper likes it. “He did this.”  
  
“What did he do?”  
  
“It was a slushie,” Blaine says, and Cooper nearly does a double take in surprise. He’s heard all about McKinley High’s propensity for slushie bullying, both from Blaine and from Kurt, but neither of them has ever suggested that this kind of damage happened.  
  
“I don’t understand. A slushie did this? How is that possible? No one else has ever ended up in the ER. Have they?”  
  
“That’s because it wasn’t just a slushie,” comes another voice.  
  
There’s a doctor standing behind them - a short woman with brown hair and intelligent eyes. Cooper can’t explain it, but the mere sight of her comforts him.  
  
“You must be his family,” she says, flipping through Blaine’s chart with practiced ease.  
  
“I am.”  
  
“All right, let me tell you what’s going on here.”  
  
Cooper listens as the doctor tells him about Blaine’s eye and what damage the rock salt caused. He’ll need surgery, but it has to wait for some of the swelling to go down.  
  
At the mention of surgery, Blaine’s face loses what color it had left and he turns his head towards Kurt, tipping his forehead against his boyfriend’s and resting it there for a long minute.  
  
“But he can come home tonight?” Cooper asks, pulling his eyes away from where Blaine and Kurt are lost in each other, taking and giving what comfort they can. Cooper is, as always, incredibly thankful for Kurt.  
  
“He can,” the doctor nods. “But the gauze stays on. We don’t want to risk any further damage before we can get in there and fix it.”  
  
“We’ll get you an eye patch Blainers, how does that sound?”  
  
Blaine rolls his good eye at him and Kurt just grins at the both of them.  
  
“I’ll send you home with a prescription for pain medication,” the doctor continues, flipping her clipboard shut. “I recommend that he just rests for the next couple of days while the swelling goes down. He’s not going to feel great anyway. Be sure to bring him back in immediately if he develops a fever or a sudden increase in pain or swelling.”  
  
Cooper nods and the shakes the doctor’s hand. Her fingers are surprisingly warm against Cooper’s ice-cold skin. And then she’s gone, off to the next patient.  
  
Cooper turns back to the hospital bed. Kurt is still holding Blaine’s hand, and Blaine is staring at where their fingers are intertwined. There’s no way Cooper is going to separate them tonight.  
  
“Kurt, you should stay with us tonight. I mean,” Cooper turns to Burt and Carole. “If that’s ok with you.”  
  
Burt fixes him with hard look. Cooper forgets, sometimes, that some kids have parents who love and adore and cherish them. No matter what.  
  
Kurt has stayed the night at Cooper’s place before, and Cooper always tells Burt that he’s got an extra bedroom for Kurt to stay in, even if it’s not entirely true. Cooper’s never sure if Burt believes him for not. But he’s never said anything about it, and Kurt is still allowed to sleep over.  
  
“It’s fine,” Burt says gruffly. “I’d like to see you try and pry them apart tonight anyway.”  
  
Both Kurt and Blaine flush bright red.  
  
“You’re still going to school tomorrow,” Burt says firmly.  
  
“But,”  
  
Cooper smiles softly at Kurt. He would let Kurt skip, but he’s not the boy’s father. “It’s ok - I’m calling in tomorrow. They can get a sub to cover. I’ll be with Blaine, though I’m sure he’d prefer you.” Cooper throws a wink at Kurt, and it feels good to see the both of them blush again.  
  
“Come on, let’s get you out of here.”  
  
***  
  
Cooper drives while Kurt and Blaine sit together in the backseat. He feels a bit like a chauffeur, but he’s ok with that. Blaine sits with his head on Kurt’s shoulder and Kurt still hasn’t let go of his hand.  
  
Together they get Blaine into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom. The pain medication from the ER has made Blaine sleepy and unsteady on his feet and they’re certainly not going to risk Blaine falling.  
  
When they get him to his bedroom, Blaine sinks heavily down onto his bed, sighing from the very depth of his being.  
  
Cooper grabs his brother’s pajamas from the drawer and hands them to Kurt, who looks at him questioningly.  
  
“I think you’ve got this,” Cooper says, with a sly little grin and Kurt flushes a dark red. Blaine makes an annoyed sound from the bed.  
  
“I, we...”  
  
“It’s ok, Kurt,” Cooper places a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, as he does so very often to Blaine. “I’m glad you’re here for him.”  
  
Kurt swallows and nods, unable to say anything in that moment.  
  
“I’ll be downstairs. I’ve got some phone calls to make. You two try and get some sleep. Do you need anything? Something to sleep in? Clothes for tomorrow?”  
  
“I uh, I think I’ve got something here that I left,” Kurt says, and his eyes flicker to Blaine’s closet. Cooper grins. Like he hasn’t noticed bits and pieces of Kurt moving into his home: the extra toothbrush in Blaine’s bathroom; the healthful food in the refrigerator; the pair of boots by the door.  
  
“Ok. Good.” Cooper gives Kurt’s shoulder another squeeze before he turns to Blaine.  
  
“Hey,” Cooper says. He steps to the edge of the bed and holds his arms out. Blaine leans forward into him and Cooper wraps him up in a hug. With Blaine sitting, the unhurt side of his face pressed to Cooper’s sternum, it feels like hugging the little boy his brother once was. Cooper drops a kiss to Blaine’s hair and tastes cherry slushie. He has to close his eyes against the sudden tears.  
  
“I love you, Blaine. And I am so, so sorry this happened again.”  
  
“I love you, too.” There is so much more they need to say about this night, but it can wait.  
  
Cooper pulls back and pressed another kiss to Blaine’s forehead. “Ok, I’ll leave you two alone. Get some sleep OK? But wake me up if you need anything, anything at all.”  
  
Cooper closes the door behind him as he leaves. He stand in the dimly lit hallway for a long moment, taking deep, slow breaths, trying to still the shaking of his hands.  
  
He wants to do so many things. He wants to scream. He wants to hit something. He wants to fall to his knees and cry. He wants to walk right into Dalton and yell at those idiot boys. What happened to  _Once a Warbler, Always a Warbler_? He wants to punch this Sebastian in the face.  
  
He settles for pouring himself a very large drink and staring blankly at the TV for an hour.  
  
***  
  
“This shirt is forever ruined.” Kurt says, placing Blaine’s pajamas next to him on the bed. He reaches out and touches his fingers to Blaine’s chest, where the slushie has dried stiff and tacky.  
  
Blaine shrugs. “I’ve got another.” It’s just a white t-shirt. He’ll throw it out; he can’t imagine ever wanting to wear it again, even if the stain washed clean.  
  
“We should get you cleaned up and into bed,” Kurt brushes his knuckles down Blaine’s cheekbone and Blaine’s good eye closes at the gentle, familiar touch. “You look exhausted.”  
  
Blaine nods. He reaches down and unclasps his watch, pulling it from his pocket. He cradles it gently in his hands, rubbing his thumb over the familiar etching of the faceplate. Tucked into its usual place in his pocket the watch was protected from any slushie, but he can’t tell if it got scratched or dented or  _broken_.  
  
“Can you check it for me? I landed on it pretty hard when I fell,” he hands the watch to Kurt, who takes it with careful, reverent fingers. “I’m having a uh, hard time seeing it.” Blaine laughs self-consciously and goes to rub at his eye. Kurt catches wrist.  
  
“Don’t do that,” he says softly, and pulls Blaine’s hand to his mouth, brushing his lips across his knuckles.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispers against Blaine’s skin, sitting down next to him on the bed. “That was for me and you took it. You pushed me out of the way and look what happened.”  
  
“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Blaine says, low and fervent. “This was about me. Hurting me. He doesn’t get to use you to hurt me.”  
  
Kurt uses his hold on Blaine’s wrist to pull his arm around his own shoulders, snuggling in close to Blaine’s side. “I don’t know what his problem is.”  
  
“Can we talk about it tomorrow? When you get home from school?”  
  
 _Home_  Kurt thinks and there’s warm ache in his chest.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Kurt helps Blaine get undressed, so careful not to bump his eye as they get his shirt off, before wadding the t-shirt up and throwing it right into the trash. He gets Blaine into the shower and doesn’t hesitate when Blaine tugs his hand with a small smile, pulling him into it too.  
  
Another time he would savor the slide of Blaine’s clothes from his body, and the flush of his skin under the hot water. Another time he’d revel in the feeling of Blaine’s curls around his fingers as he washes his hair for him, the shampoo pulling gel and slushie from it and sending it down the drain. Kurt uses his hands to cup water and carefully rinses Blaine’s hair, making sure to keep the gauze over his damaged eye dry.  
  
Any other day he’d delight in being able to rub a soft towel, slow and careful, over Blaine’s damp, warmed skin - feeling muscle and bones shift beneath his touch, before helping him into his ridiculous pajamas. To crawl into his neatly made bed and rest his head on Blaine’s pillow, so close he can taste Blaine’s breath. To be pressed in close to the heat of him, with the smell of him thick and clean all around him.  
  
Tonight though, he contents himself with a slow kiss to Blaine’s mouth, just a light, almost chaste press of his lips. He can feel Blaine’s sleepy smile and know he’ll be asleep in moments.  
  
“I love you,” he whispers in the dark.  
  
***  
  
There’s a knock on the front door the next morning, after Kurt has left for school. Blaine is nestled on the sofa - his eye feels better if he can rest his head back against something - and Cooper is cleaning up the remnants of their breakfast. Kurt had wanted to help, but Cooper had kicked him out of the kitchen with a playful shove to his shoulder and a teasing:  
  
“Go kiss your boyfriend goodbye. I’ve got this.”  
  
Cooper dries his hands on a towel before making his way to the door. He can’t imagine who would be at his house this early.  
  
When he opens the door, all the air leaves him in a rush. He grips the doorknob so tightly he’s sure it groans in protest.  
  
His parents are standing on the stoop, and they are many some of the last people Cooper expected to see.  
  
Mr. Anderson is fully dressed in a suit, despite the still early hour. It looks expensive, and it very likely is, with a long trench coat accentuating his broad frame. Mrs. Anderson is small and delicate next to him in a pale dress and peacoat.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Cooper demands. It’s taking all the restraint he possesses not to slam the door in their faces.  
  
“We heard about Blaine,” his mother says.  
  
“How?” Cooper certainly didn’t call them.  
  
“We received a call from a Mr. Hummel,” Mr. Anderson says, almost through clenched teeth. “He said he was the father of Blaine’s...friend, who was present during the incident.”  
  
Cooper clenches his jaw.  _Blaine’s friend_. All this time and he still can’t say it.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“We’d like to see him. He is our son.”  
  
Cooper can’t stop the snort that escapes him and his father’s eyes flash a warning at him. “No, he’s not. You kicked him out. You sent him away. You didn’t want him.”  
  
 _But I did. I took him. I cared for him. I loved him._  
  
“Cooper, please.” His mother at least looks wounded by his statement; her eyes are downcast and she’s frowning. Cooper hopes she hurts even a fraction of how much Blaine hurt that warm late summer evening. His father remains impassive.  
  
“If you say  _anything_  to him to upset him,” Cooper warns, stepping aside and letting his parents into his house for the first time.  
  
He leads them straight to the living room, where Blaine is stretched out on the sofa idly flipping through the channels on the TV.  
  
Blaine jumps to his feet on instinct when he sees his parents walk into the room, but he’s a little woozy from his pain medication and the room swims. Cooper sees his brother sway on his feet and rushes to him, grabbing his elbow to help steady him.  
  
Blaine gapes at the still figures in front of him. He hasn’t seen his parents in almost six months - not since they kicked him out - and the air grows thick and heavy all around him at the sight of them.  
  
“What,” he starts, but his mouth is suddenly so dry his tongue sticks on his words. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“We heard about what happened, from Kurt’s father.” At least their mother can say his name. “That you were in the hospital again.” Mrs. Anderson’s dark-eyed gaze flicks to Blaine’s eye patch.  
  
“Are you OK?” She asks with such genuine concern that Blaine has to swallow against the rise of emotion. Despite it all, she is still his mother. She gave birth to him, raised him, cared for him - loved him. He can’t, he won’t, deny her that, but can’t forget what she allowed to happen. And he’s not ready to forgive.  
  
“I’m fine. You could have called,” Blaine tugs nervously at the cuffs of his pajamas. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”  
  
“Blaine,” Mr. Anderson begins, and both Cooper and Blaine feel themselves straightening up, standing just a bit taller at the authority of his father’s voice. Old habits are terribly hard to break.  
  
“Your mother and I came here to tell you something.”  
  
“We’d like for you to come home now,” his mother says, and she is clutching her purse so tightly her knuckles are white.  
  
Blaine’s jaw drops and the room swims a little again. He hears Cooper swear softly under his breath. In front of them his parents are staring at them expectantly. His father does not look happy, but his mother is so hopeful. But he can’t. He can’t. They are his parents and he loves them despite himself, but he doesn’t need them.  
  
Blaine takes a shuffling little step closer to Cooper, who is radiating tension. He reaches out and takes Cooper’s hand, clutching tightly to it like he used to when he was little and needed his brother’s unflagging reassurance.  
  
“I am home.”  
  
Cooper squeezes his hand even tighter.  
  
Mrs. Anderson makes a small sound in her throat, but nods ever so slightly. His father clenches his jaw so tightly Blaine’s sure he can hear the man’s teeth grinding.  
  
“This is your decision?” Mr. Anderson asks and it’s the same voice as  _before_. And the answer is the same.  
  
“It is.”  
  
“Then that’s that. Let’s go.” Mr. Anderson turns on his heel and begins to head for the hallway.  
  
Mrs. Anderson casts a long, aching look at her sons before she too turns. Cooper is squeezing Blaine’s hand so tightly it hurts.  
  
“Mom,” Blaine suddenly calls out, and she turns back. “I – I’ll call you. I will.”  
  
She smiles, then, just a slight curve of her lips, but it makes Blaine think that maybe, one day, they will be ok.  
  
And then they’re gone. Blaine hears the front door close, a dull  _thwump_  echoing through the house, and he turns into his brother’s body, pressing close as Cooper wraps his arms around him.  
  
Blaine’s not crying, but he stands there for a long minute, face pressed to Cooper’s collarbone, just breathing, as Cooper rubs his back in long, soothing passes. He hums a little into his hair, a tuneless little song.  
  
“Do you want to call Kurt or something?” Cooper asks finally.  
  
Blaine shakes his head. “He’s in class. I’ll send him a text. He doesn’t – I don’t want to worry him when he can’t, when he’s still at school.”  
  
“Do you want to watch Singing in the Rain?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
Cooper spends the afternoon curled on the couch with Blaine, watching old movies and making a dent in junk food stash that they’ve had to start hiding from Kurt, lest he throws it all away.  
  
Blaine falls asleep at some point, face smushed into one of the pillows, and Cooper leaves him be, covered with a old, soft blanket, until Kurt comes back from school.  
  
It doesn't quite feel like resolution, but it's getting closer.


	14. Call Thee Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's Day doesn't go quite as planned.
> 
> warning: maybe a little more swearing than usual

Blaine is seventeen and someone else is wooing his boyfriend. And there’s nothing he can do about it.  
  
Cooper comes home from work midweek to find Blaine huddled on the sofa in the living room, red plaid blanket draped across his shoulders. His feet are planted on the cushion; arms wrapped his legs, chin resting on one knee. He’s staring moodily at something – his uncovered eye dark and narrowed.  
  
There is a beautiful bouquet of two-dozen deep red roses in a glass vase on the coffee table.  
  
“Oh, wow. Kurt’s gonna love those!” Cooper exclaims. He knows what kind of a sap his brother can be when it comes to Kurt. He’ll never forget that ridiculous gum-wrapper ring, or his brother’s gratitude over the Christmas present.  
  
“How did you go out and get them? You’re not supposed to drive with that eye patch. Or the pain meds.”  
  
Blaine just grunts noncommittally and rubs his chin against his knee. It’s a move Cooper has seen from Blaine before, when he was little and upset about something, but didn’t want to talk about it.  
  
Cooper sits down on the coffee table in front of Blaine. He can smell the sweet, delicate fragrance of the roses. He remembers the bouquets of flowers that were always on the sill of their grandmother’s kitchen window.  
  
“All right, what’s going on?”  
  
Blaine ducks his head and hides his face between his knees, careful not to put any pressure on his eye. The surgery had gone perfectly, but he’s supposed to wear the patch until the end of the week. He’s sick of it. It gets hot against his cheek and the strap rubs at this scalp and tugs his hair.  
  
“Kurt’s got a secret admirer,” Blaine mutters into his knees, not much louder than a whisper.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t make me say it again.”  
  
“I heard you I just, I don’t understand.” Cooper was at Dalton for the entirety of high school and doesn’t really know what public school is like. But he’s having a hard time imagining a boy publicly sending another boy romantic gifts - especially at a school where slushie facials and locker-slams are apparently the accepted norm.  
  
“Someone is sending Kurt Valentine’s gifts. At school. Leaving shit in his locker. Candy. Flowers. Cards. A goddamn Gorilla Gram.” Blaine practically snarls the last bit and the hurt and the anger in his voice startles Cooper. Blaine’s hands curl into tight fists, and a few small scars stand out white against the tanned skin of his knuckles.  
  
“And he thinks it’s me. He thinks I’m doing it. And I’m not. I’m his boyfriend and it’s not me.” Blaine presses his lips together, and this close Cooper can see the tears welling in his good eye before he blinks them away. He can see the flex of muscle as Blaine clenches and unclenches his jaw.  
  
“It should be  _me_.”  
  
Cooper knows that if Blaine were feeling better he would be pacing back and forth, hands flailing wildly with the emotion he feels but can’t verbalize. His brother is often a study in contrasts. He tries so hard to be this font of courage and steady calm, but inside, beneath the bowties and the hair and the  _dapper_ , he is just a boy who feels too much and doesn’t always know how to show it.  
  
They are Andersons. Fear and doubt and anxiety are not for them.  
  
Cooper moves off the coffee table and slides onto the sofa next to Blaine. Blaine is tense and thrumming with nervous energy next to him. He adjusts the blanket so it falls over his shoulders too, cocooning them both in its warmth and well-worn softness. He remembers when Blaine had gotten the blanket.  
  
It had been their grandfather’s, and it sat on the back of the armchair in the living room of their grandparents’ home for years. Whenever they stayed over Blaine would fall asleep in that chair, curled up in the soft blanket, until after one visit, when they were getting packed up and into the car, grandfather had tucked the blanket snug around Blaine and told him to keep it.  
  
For a long time it had smelled of grandfather’s shaving cream and pipe tobacco. Now it smells of Blaine’s cologne and Kurt’s shampoo.  
  
It takes a moment, where Blaine is stiff and unmoving next to him, but Blaine finally relaxes and slumps against Cooper, curling into his side.  
  
“I had a plan, you know? All these plans because it’s our first Valentine’s together and if I thought I fucked up Christmas last year, I  _really_ fucked up Valentine’s Day.”  
  
Cooper bites his lip to stop his smile. Blaine had been so damn excited about the Warblers' performance at the GAP. Cooper hadn’t had the heart to tell him what a god-awful idea it was. Some things a boy needs to learn on his own.  
  
“I was going to bring him little gifts all week at school. I had a list.” Blaine tips his head onto Cooper’s shoulder. “And then on Friday I had this big number all planned out and Tina and Mercedes were going to back me up and it was going to be great and then this – this fucking _eye_  happened and I couldn’t do any of it.”  
  
Blaine stops then, and Cooper hears him sniffle a bit. The hurt of the Warblers’ betrayal isn’t going to soothe over easily.  
  
“And he just – he’s so happy about it. So happy. School was so awful for him for so long and here he’s getting these gifts. In public. And it’s ok. He was over this afternoon and he had the balloons from that fucking Gorilla Gram and just kept  _looking_  at them and grinning and then looking back at me with his big stupid perfect eyes and fuck.  _Fuck_.”  
  
Cooper leans his cheek against the top of Blaine’s head. The curls are soft and ungelled for once.  
  
“Do you have any idea who it could be?” He asks.  
  
“NO! There’s no one else out at McKinley. And I can’t think of anyone who  _might_  be. It’s not like Dalton, it’s – it’s dangerous there.”  
  
“Apparently it’s dangerous at Dalton too.” Cooper doesn’t even try to hide the venom in his voice. He still can’t believe that the Headmaster did nothing to Sebastian over this. His storming into the office and demanding the kid get expelled, or at least suspended, had been a useless gesture. Throwing open those doors had felt damn good though.  
  
“Don’t, Coop. Just don’t. Not right now.”  
  
“So what are you going to do?”  
  
“There’s going to be a party, a dance, at Breadstix. For Valentine’s.” Blaine sighs from deep in his chest and burrows in closer to Cooper’s side. Blaine has a complicated relationship with dances, even after junior prom, and Cooper knows it can’t be easier for him to want to go to one.  
  
“Well you know what you need to do? Go to this hootenanny and claim your boy.” Cooper squeezes Blaine’s shoulder. “You didn’t get to sing him some disgustingly, sickeningly romantic song at school, but you can do it there. Show this secret admirer what’s what.”  
  
“Coop,”  
  
“Oh come on, you know you want to. I know what you’re like. I’ll help you plan it!”  
  
Blaine groans, but a smile creeps onto his face. “Like that’ll go well. I know what  _you’re_  like.”  
  
“Hey!  _It’s Not Unusual_  went well, didn’t it?” Cooper has fond memories of finding videos of the Carlton dance and teaching it to Blaine. It was the perfect way to raise his spirits the first week after getting kicked out.  
  
“Until Quinn lit the piano on fire. Poor defenseless piano.”  
  
“Well Kurt loved it. He told me so.”  
  
Blaine just grunts again, but Cooper can tell, Cooper knows that Blaine’s thinking about it. His brother has always been one for the big scene, the grand gesture, and he’s so very desperate to make his and Kurt’s Valentine’s Day memorable.  
  
“Oh man, you know what we should do?”  
  
“I can’t imagine.”  
  
“We should make you a Valentine’s eye patch! Heart-shaped with rhinestones and glitter and the works.”  
  
Blaine’s bark of laughter is just the reaction Cooper was looking for.  
  
***  
  
Blaine is getting ready for the big dance Cooper’s bedroom, testing different bow ties against his shirt, when his phone rings. Cooper knows it’s Kurt by the ringtone, and by the way Blaine’s face lights up as he grabs for the phone.  
  
“Hey you!”  
  
Cooper doesn’t know what Kurt says just then, but he knows it can’t be good, not with the way Blaine’s face falls in an instant.  
  
Blaine turns his back, wrapping an arm around his chest as he does, but Cooper catches the confusion and the hurt on his face.  
  
Cooper tries not to listen, he does, to give Blaine a little privacy, but his tone of voice, soft and aching, but growing angry with each passing second, and the lowering slump of his shoulders is all Cooper needs - something has gone wrong.  
  
Blaine ends the call with a quiet, curt  _ok bye_  and slams his phone down on the dresser. He stands there, chest moving with barely contained anger, and Cooper knows his brother is wishing there were a punching bag anywhere near by. He keeps meaning to set one up in the basement - he’ll do it this weekend.  
  
“Everything ok, B?” Cooper asks, taking a cautious step towards Blaine. He wants nothing more than to wrap Blaine up in his arms, but Blaine’s too tightly wound for that at the moment.  
  
“It was him,” Blaine spits out. “The secret admirer. It was Karofsky.”  
  
Cooper’s brow furrows. “The kid who bullied Kurt?”  
  
“Bullied and attacked and assaulted and threatened to kill? Yeah. That kid.” Blaine clenches his fists tight and feels his nails dig deep into his palms.  
  
“This whole fucking week it’s been him. All of it. The candy and the cards and fucking flowers. And he told Kurt to meet him before the dance and Kurt  _did_  thinking it was  _me_. And it wasn’t. It hasn’t been me at all. He told Kurt he loves him! That he fucking  _loves_  him.” Blaine presses the heels of his hands to his forehead, as if he could force whatever he’s thinking, whatever he’s imaging, out of his head.  
  
Cooper adds one Karofsky to the growing list of people he will never be all right with.  
  
“I can’t. I just. Why is everything always so...why does it always-” Blaine stops, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes for a long moment. Cooper watches a million emotions flicker across his face before Blaine squares his shoulders and turns to face the mirror.  
  
He grabs at the ends of the bow tie he’d selected and struggles to get it to knot correctly, but the ends slip from his fingers over and over.  
  
Cooper sighs and moves to stand in front of Blaine, batting his hands out of the way and grasping the ends of the tie in his own fingers.  
  
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Blaine mutters, licking his dry lips. He lets his brother help him with his bowtie since his hands are suddenly a little too shaky to do a decent job of it. The anger is bleeding out of him, leaving behind hurt and doubt and a ache in his gut that’s threatening to crawl it’s up and out his throat.  
  
“What? No, you can’t back out now. You’re supposed to be there in half an hour.” Cooper gives Blaine’s deep red bowtie one final tug, making sure it’s perfect.  
  
“Yeah but, now, after - after this,” Blaine stops himself from saying anything else. He shoves his hands into his pockets and scruffs the floor with his shoe.  
  
He doesn’t think he’ll ever like Karofsky, not after everything he’s done to Kurt, and almost certainly not after this. Blaine can’t imagine becoming friendly with the person who sent his boyfriend gifts for Valentine’s Day, and declared his love for him, knowing full well Kurt is spoken for.  
  
“Do not let that Karofsky kid ruin this for you, for either of you.” Cooper places both hands on Blaine’s shoulders and forces his brother to look at him. “This is about you and Kurt and no one else. Do you understand me?”  
  
Blaine nods. Sometimes he loves his brother; the rest of the time he doesn’t know what he’d do without him.  
  
Cooper grins and pulls Blaine into a quick hug, kissing his forehead.  
  
“All right then,” he reaches over and grabs the newly made eye patch off the dresser. “I can’t believe you didn’t let me bedazzle this. It would have looked great.”  
  
Blaine’s rolls his eyes, both them (and damn does that feel good), before sliding the eye patch on for the last time. “As if I’d let you anywhere near a hot glue gun. Not again. Not after last time.”  
  
Cooper helps him adjust the heart-shaped patch that just about matches the bowtie, then he smooths down Blaine’s lapels. “Hey, the glitter finally came out, didn’t it?”  
  
“Uh-huh, sure.”  
  
“Hold on,” Cooper goes to his closet and stretches up on his toes to grab something from the top shelf.  
  
“Here,” he plops a hat down on top of Blaine’s head. It’s a little small, but it works. “Go get your boy.”  
  
***  
  
Hours later Cooper’s phone buzzes with a text:  
  
 _Kurt’s coming over. Be gone._  
  
Cooper laughs and thumbs back a quick response:  
  
 _Atta boy._


	15. Interlude: It'll Never Fold Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blaine has a revelation about Kurt. Cooper rolls his eyes.
> 
> Set immediately after the events of Season Two's "New York" episode.

Cooper is twenty-four and has absolutely nothing that he needs to be doing.  
  
He is splayed comfortably on the sofa, one foot propped up the coffee table, newspaper in his hands. He’s been reading the same article on the Buckeyes for the last hour and half, in between bouts of napping and snacking. It’s the beginning of the summer after his first real year of teaching, and Cooper is ready to spend the next few weeks doing less than nothing before he starts prepping for the fall.  
  
He’s enjoying teaching more than he thought he would. When he gave up law school, and his father’s approval, he had no idea what he wanted to do. Travel the world. Learn a new language. Read at least four of those books that have been on his shelf for years. Spend every day in his underwear eating Pop-Tarts. It didn’t matter, in the end, as long as it was something  _he_  wanted.  
  
But then a professor had suggested teaching as a possible career, after see how he naturally takes over the classroom during discussions, and the idea hadn’t sounded horrible. Not the way becoming a lawyer, or a doctor, or an executive sounded soul crushing.  
  
And besides, Cooper likes kids. He likes their open hearts and unclouded eyes; their unabashed curiosity. He likes how they say what they mean – no holds barred, no worries about hurt feelings or social stigma. A kid will look you straight in the eyes and tell you you’re wrong. Cooper thinks the way they plant their little fists on their hips and declare something as undeniable truth adorable.  
  
It’s refreshing after so many years seated around his father’s dinner table with his business partners, biting his tongue and looking down at the table to keep from rolling his eyes and the ridiculous conversations going on around him. Cases won. Accounts closed. Business deals finalized. All of it superficial and grating. He’s glad he never has to sit through another one of those dinners again.  
  
And it’s not like he doesn’t have more than enough practice taking care of kids. He spent ten years bringing up Blaine.  
  
It was tough, the first year. There’s no denying that. Getting used to the quirks of children who aren’t his brother. Handling the endless bureaucracy of the public school system. Dealing with the  _parents_. Few things are worse than uppity parents. But the good – the laughter, the spontaneity, the joy - had outweighed the bad a thousand times over and he’s ready to do it all again this next year. He finds his thrives in the controlled chaos of a loud and raucous classroom. Though hopefully the next year will contain fewer glue accidents.  
  
He’s been thinking about working towards a PhD. He likes teaching elementary school, but a university might pay better. And he’s pretty sure he could find a place back at Dalton Academy. He left that school with high honors and all the recommendations he could want for. The world is opening to him now in a way it never had before.  
  
But there’s Blaine to think about – Blaine who is going to be going to college himself soon and won’t have access to his own trust fund account until he turns twenty-one. Cooper’s job doesn’t pay that much, enough for his mortgage and the necessities and spending cash, but he’ll have to tap into his own trust fund for Blaine’s school. And he’s not going to count on scholarships that don’t yet exist. He doesn’t begrudge Blaine a cent of that fund, but he has to be realistic.  
  
Cooper looks up from where he’s once again not reading the newspaper when he hears the front door opens. It’s almost 5pm and there’s only one other person who has a key to his house.  
  
Blaine appears in the entry to the living room. His messenger bag is dangling from his hand, dragging on the floor behind him. He has the happiest, dopiest, mooniest face that Cooper has ever seen on another person outside of a Disney cartoon.  
  
Nothing good is going to come from this.  
  
“Oh god what?”  
  
Blaine takes a few steps forward then collapses to the floor and lies there, starfished flat on his back. The smile has not left his face. His eyes have nearly disappeared into his cheeks.  
  
“I told him I love him. He told me he loves me. We said we love each other.” Blaine squirms happily against the floor. He’s almost drumming his heels.  
  
Cooper bites his lip against a huff of laughter. God help him his baby brother is in love for the first time.  
  
“You drove all the way out here to tell me that?”  
  
“We were having coffee and he was telling me about New York and singing on a Broadway stage and even after losing he was so happy about it. About everything. He’s just so…so…he just takes what the world throws at him and twists it and turns it around into something good. Something worthwhile. How does he do that? How does it not break him? After everything he’s been through?” Blaine takes a deep breath and presses one hand to his belly, the other to his heart. It’s almost as if he’s trying to hold himself together from bursting apart at the seams.  
  
“How can I not love him?” He breathes out the words like a revelation.  
  
Cooper rolls his eyes all the way to New York and back. He lifts the paper back up to cover his face. He doesn’t need Blaine to see the enormous smile that is forming on his own face.  
  
“You let me know when you’re done writing horrible poetry about the color of his eyes and the way he ties his shoelaces and whatever else it is you kids do these days, OK? OK.”  
  
“It just came out, you know? He was talking and then it was there and I couldn’t have held it back if I wanted to.”  
  
“Did you want to hold it back?”  
  
“NO! God no. Of course not. It’s true. It’s so very true. I love him, I do.” Blaine squirms against the floor again, like he can’t keep still, not with everything thrumming under his skin and racing through his body.  
  
“I’m in love with him.”  
  
Cooper gets it. He does. He remembers the rush of a first love. He remembers the upheaval and the awe - the realization and the sudden understanding. He remembers how the world all at once clicks together and falls away.  
  
He knew it would happen for Blaine, one day. But there had been a time, not that long ago, when he hadn’t been so sure. When he’d wondered if Blaine would even open up enough to let anyone else close to him.  
  
Cooper had worried so much about Blaine after the dance. How dim and distant his eyes had been for so many months. How he’d changed his hair and his clothes; how he’d shrugged that Dalton blazer on like bulletproof vest. Blaine had always been good at school – bright and studious – but after the dance he’d thrown himself into his schoolwork like never before. Cooper has to credit the Warblers for slowly drawing Blaine out of his cocoon, especially since he himself hadn’t been there to do it. Sometimes, late at night, Cooper regrets not dropping out of school and coming home to be there for Blaine full-time.  
  
But Blaine recovered. Step by step. Inch by inch. And he’d come far enough that even the disaster of that boy from the GAP hadn’t shut him down again.  
  
And now here his brother is, flat on the floor on his living room - utterly, hopelessly, completely in love with a boy who loves him back.  
  
Cooper is so happy for him he feels his own heart squeeze painfully. The past is, maybe, finally another country.  
  
“Call mom,” Cooper says. “Let her know that you’re staying for dinner.”  
  
“All right.” Blaine just lies there, staring at the ceiling, his hand rubbing tiny unconscious circles over his heart.  
  
“Blaine,”  
  
“Yeah?” His voice is soft and dreamy. Blaine is clearly far-gone and away somewhere. Probably off in some magical mystical land made entirely of Kurt’s eyes and his wrists and his goddamn dimples or something.  
  
“Get your phone out of your pocket and call mom.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“Jesus Christ kid, how long are you going to be useless like this?” Cooper grabs one of the pillows off the couch and throws it at Blaine. It smacks his brother in the leg, but he hardly reacts.  
  
“Forever,” Blaine laughs then, open and carefree, and drags his hands across his face and through his hair.  
  
“You’re not going to taste anything I cook for you, are you?”  
  
“Probably not.”  
  
“Leftovers it is.”  
  
“Coop?” Blaine turns his head and gazes at his brother. Cooper is struck by the joy and  _life_  evident in his eyes. “Don’t be jealous, OK?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I still love you most of all.”  
  
“Oh god,” Cooper throws another pillow at Blaine, and this one lands on Blaine’s face. Blaine just laughs, bright and musical, and tucks the pillow under his head. Cooper rolls off the couch to head to the kitchen. In this state his brother would probably set the house on fire just trying to microwave leftover Thai.  
  
“Blaine?” Cooper pauses by his brother and looks down at him. He nudges Blaine’s hip with his foot.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I love you best of all too.”  
  
Blaine grabs Cooper’s ankle and squeezes it. “I know.”


	16. A Short-Lived Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper doesn't know how to fight with Blaine.

Cooper is twenty-five and his baby brother is starting to think about which college he’s going to attend.  
  
All week the brochures have been arriving, ever since Blaine had to attend that utterly useless Career Day put on by McKinley’s not-quite-competent guidance counselor. He’d checked off a few boxes, marking his current interests with a #2 pencil, and somehow that was supposed to translate to his life’s goals. And then he’d entered his address and email into database and sent off his information to every school in the country.  
  
Almost immediately the brochures and pamphlets and emails had started pouring in. UC Berkeley. Juilliard. Harvard. Ithaca. Cornell. Boston Conservatory. And dozens of other schools from across the country that Cooper hasn’t even heard of. There have even been a few from outside the country. Cooper doesn’t want to think about Blaine being that far away from him.  
  
The pile of informational packets on the kitchen counter keeps growing and Cooper’s getting legitimately worried that one day it’s going to topple and bury them both beneath an avalanche of paper. He gives the pile a wary look every time he passes it.  
  
After the first three days of a completely full mailbox, Cooper stopped looking at the brochures and just started throwing them on the counter for Blaine to get to later. One weekend they’ll sit down and start sorting through the pile, separating the wheat from the chaff, the maybes from the no way in hell am I go there.  
  
Cooper has his opinions on where he wants Blaine to go. He has huge dreams for Blaine’s life, his career. But he’s struggling to keep quiet about them. This is Blaine’s decision. It’s difficult enough to be seventeen, and struggling with everything that comes with that, and then to be asked to decide right then, right now, when you think you want from the rest of your life - Cooper’s not going to heap his own, surely biased opinions, onto Blaine as well.  
  
And Cooper remembers well being told what his life should be like - where he should go to college, what he should study, exactly what his future should be like. He remembers being upbraided about what it means to be an Anderson and how dare he lower the standards of this family.  
  
He is not going to be their father to Blaine. He can’t. He won’t. He won’t tell Blaine what kind of person he should be. Blaine is a good kid, perfectly competent to make his own decision and choices in life. After all, Blaine made the choice to leave Dalton and go to McKinley, knowing exactly what it would cost him to do so.  
  
Cooper’s done plenty for Blaine these last two years - he’s going to do this for him as well.  
  
And besides, it’s Blaine decision where he wants to go and therefore he’s the one that gets to risk a multitude of paper cuts sifting through a mountain of college brochures.  
  
Sometimes Cooper thinks it’s a little early for this, for college preparation, but it’s not. Not at all. Blaine’s begun studying for the SATs with some of the other kids from Glee club, and he’s already considering what AP classes he’s going to take next year.  
  
Then again, sometimes Cooper’s surprised to find Blaine studying AP calculus, and not coloring in another picture of a Disney prince in his giant coloring book, or playing with Legos on the floor, carefully arranging them by color before constructing his latest castle.  
  
Cooper chest swells at the sudden realization that his Blaine, his little Blainers, his baby brother, is almost a man grown. He’s known it was coming for years. Blaine’s been an almost-adult for far too many years already, but this is a different. This is Blaine going off and finding himself, finding what he wants for himself. Cooper hopes that he’s done a good enough job at helping Blaine along his journey.  
  
That afternoon, Cooper approaches the mailbox with trepidation. It’s so full it can’t even close all the way. He’s sure the mailman absolutely hates his job right now; he really can’t blame him. Cooper makes a mental note to get Kurt to bake some cookies or something for him, as a peace offering. Or maybe just give the poor man a hug.  
  
Sure enough, 94% of that day’s mail are catalogs from a whole new crop of schools. Cooper flips through them absently, noting the carefully diverse grouping of faces on the front of each one, until his eyes catch the familiar name of one of the schools.  
  
 _New York Academy of the Dramatic Arts._  
  
Cooper stops in the hallway, staring at the shiny, gaudy brochure. He’s not sure why he’s surprised, but he is. NYADA. Where Kurt is most likely going. Every thought he’d had about not telling Blaine what to do with his college career is suddenly gone.  
  
He takes the mail into the kitchen like he always does and tosses the other school advertisements onto the leaning pile, and throws the bills and actual mail into another pile. He’ll get to them later.  
  
Cooper leans his elbows against the kitchen island and reads the NYADA brochure, cover to cover, over and over again, until Blaine comes home.  
  
He hears the front door open and then close, and he’s relieved when he only hears one set of footsteps coming down the hall. He’s never had to kick Kurt out of the house before, and it’s not something he really ever wants to do.  
  
Blaine comes into the kitchen, slinging his messenger bag onto one of the stools. He looks a little tired, but that’s becoming par for the course these days, what with his classes piling on the work now that it’s coming up on the end of the year, and his own long SAT study sessions. Not to mention the Glee clubs extra practices as they get ready for Nationals.  
  
“Hey, Coop,” Blaine says, smiling at him. “How’d school go?”  
  
“Just fine,” Cooper replies, and he struggles not to just outright through the NYADA brochure at Blaine’s stupid, short-sighted head. “How’d it go for you?”  
  
“Mr. Shue’s an idiot,” Blaine shakes his head a little, but he’s still smiling, so whatever happened at Glee couldn’t have been that bad.  
  
“So,” Cooper starts, and then pauses. He can’t believe he’s about to say these words. “We need to talk.”  
  
Blaine freezes and cocks his head. His smile shifts into something amused, teasing, and a little fond. “Ok, Mr. Anderson.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Cooper snaps, so much harsher than he wanted. He has no idea what he’s going to say, what he’s  _supposed_  to say.  
  
The smile slips from Blaine’s face. “Okay,” he says slowly, confused. Suddenly nervous. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Sit down,” Cooper gestures to the bar stool across the kitchen island from where he’s standing.  
  
“You’re freaking me out here,” Blaine says as he slides on the stool. The panic is rising in him. He’s seen the serious side of Cooper before, plenty of times, but it’s never really been directed at him before.  
  
Silently, Cooper pushes the brochure across the counter, watching Blaine’s face as he does so. Blaine’s eyes widen with realization when he sees what it is and he nervously licks his lips.  
  
“Coop, I,”  
  
“Blaine,” Cooper cuts him off. “I’m not going to tell you what to do with your life. I can’t. Not after Dad, not after everything. But this is - we need to talk about this. About the reasons for this.”  
  
Blaine touches the shiny brochure will nervous, tentative fingers. The cover really is gaudy and ostentatious. “It’s a good school,” he says, almost a whisper. He says it like he’s trying to make himself believe it.  
  
“Don’t bullshit me, Blaine. We both know why you’re ever considering this. I want to hear it from you. Tell me.”  
  
Blaine’s head suddenly snaps up. There’s a fire in his eyes, darkening them, and the color is so different that for the barest split-second, Cooper hardly recognizes his brother at all.  
  
“Why you care so much? You just said it yourself - you’re not going to tell me where to go to school. So why does it suddenly sound an awful lot like you’re telling me where NOT to go?”  
  
Cooper swallows. His mouth is dry and tastes of bile. This is not how he wanted this conversation to go. He’s not a father, he’s not Blaine’s father. He’s just his brother and he doesn’t know how to do this. He’s always been so sure of his place as Blaine’s protector, his guardian, and it feels like it’s all crashing down on him.  
  
“I’m not telling you what to do, I swear I’m not. I just need to know you’re thinking this thing through, that you’re weighing your options. There are so many great schools out there - so many places for you to consider. So many wonderful programs for you. I need to know that you’re not thinking about this for all the wrong reasons.”  
  
Blaine sneers then, just a little, and the expression is so ugly that it breaks something inside of Cooper. “Yeah and what are those wrong reasons?”  
  
“You know what they are.”  
  
“You don’t think I should go where Kurt is going,” Blaine grips the brochure tightly in his hands, slowly twisting it into a tube.  
  
“I think you need to consider the future, your future.”  
  
 _Don’t make me say it_ , Cooper thinks desperately.  _I don't want to be the one to say it._  
  
“You don’t think we’re going to last,” Blaine says, and the bitterness, the hurt, fairly drips off his tongue. “You think it’s foolish of me to think about following him to college because we’re going to break up when he leaves in the fall anyway.”  
  
“Blaine,” Cooper presses his palms flat to the cool counter top. “I know you’re in love. I know. And Kurt is wonderful, he really really is. I couldn’t ask for a better partner for you. And I know it feels like it’s going to be forever, but please, please take your  _own_  interests into consideration here. I mean, does NYADA even have the kind of program you’re looking for? Or is it just to be with Kurt? I know you love him, but-”  
  
“Oh what the fuck would you know about it?” Blaine interrupts, jumping to his feet. The stool scrapes against the floor as it gets pushed away. Cooper is taken aback by the anger and rage contorting Blaine’s familiar features.  
  
“When was the last time you even went on a date?” The question is full of venom, designed to hurt, and it does.  
  
“Oh about two years. I’ve been kind of busy taking care of someone,” Cooper fires back, quick as lightning, and he regrets it the moment the words fall from his lips. Tears spring to Blaine’s eyes and he takes a small step back.  
  
“Don’t you dare throw that in my face.”  
  
“Don’t you throw it in mine!”  
  
They stop. Cooper is breathing heavily, and so is Blaine - his chest rising and falling rapidly. Cooper can feel the anger radiating off him, even from ten feet away. Blaine’s fists are clenched tight at his sides, the NYADA brochure a twisted wreck in one hand, and his feet are planted; he looks like he’s ready to throw a punch. Cooper would gladly take that hit.  
  
“I’m going to go for a walk or something,” Blaine says quietly, jaw clenching and unclenching.. He looks back over his shoulder at the doorway out of the kitchen.  
  
“No you’re not,” Cooper raps the counter top with his knuckles. “We’re fighting. This is us fighting. We’re going to fight it out.”  
  
“I don’t know how to fight with you,” Blaine says, as his once tense shoulders slump. He finally looks back at Cooper. There are unshed, angry tears in both of their eyes.  
  
“Well I don’t know how to fight with you either,” Cooper folds his arms around his chest. He looks away from Blaine eyes, and then back to them. “I think one of us is supposed to storm out.”  
  
“I tried. You stopped me.”  
  
“This is weird and uncomfortable.” A tiny smile finally curves Cooper’s mouth and he rubs nervously at the back of his neck. His skin feels hot and too tight for his body.  
  
Unbidden, a laugh huffs from Blaine. “Yeah it is.”  
  
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Cooper says, a little helplessly.  
  
“I know you are. I do.”  
  
Cooper can’t take the distance between them anymore. He comes around the kitchen island and wraps his arms around Blaine, pulling his tight to his chest.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into Blaine’s hair, relieved when he feels Blaine’s arm loop around his waist.  
  
“I’m sorry too.”  
  
There’s a long stretch of silence, and Cooper’s grateful for it. He’s already said too many things this afternoon he didn’t mean to. He’s afraid to say anything else.  
  
“I’ve been thinking, about community college,” Blaine finally says, his cheek still pressed to Cooper’s collarbone.  
  
“What?”  
  
“For next year. Taking my classes there instead of at McKinley.”  
  
“Blaine,”  
  
“I know. It’s just - he’s not going to be there. I’m going to have to walk through those damn hallways knowing I’m not going to see him, knowing that he’s thousands of fucking miles away. I don’t think I can do it, Coop. I can’t. Knowing that he’s somewhere out there, meeting new people, having new experiences. I can’t.”  
  
“You don’t honestly think he’d cheat on you, do you?” Cooper squeezes Blaine tight. “Come on. That boy is ass over teakettle for you.”  
  
“Coop,”  
  
“No, stop being stupid. Yeah, he’s not going to be there at school. But you have other friends. I know it feels like it, but Kurt is not your whole life.”  
  
Blaine just rolls his eyes.  
  
“He’s not. I know what I said earlier about needing to consider what your future is going to be like, and the implication that Kurt’s not always going to be in it, but I’m not trying to say that’s the only eventuality.” Cooper pulls back and places his hands on Blaine’s shoulders, looks him square in the eyes.  
  
“The two of you might stay together the rest of yours lives. You might get married and have babies and be perfectly, ridiculously happy together for-fucking-ever.”  
  
Blaine can’t stop his smile at the mere thought of that future.  
  
“But the fact is you’re going to have a year apart from him, at least. You are. And that sucks. I get that. But there are other people who care about, who give a damn about you.” Cooper gives Blaine a little shake, part fondness, part exasperation. “You’re not the only one who’s going to be missing someone when they leave.”  
  
Blaine grins up at his brother. “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.” His voice is full of love and affection, and a little bit of brotherly teasing.  
  
“I am going to miss you terribly when you’re gone.” Cooper leans in a presses a kiss to Blaine’s forehead. “I’m not telling you what to do, but I think you should stay at McKinley next year. Be there for the other juniors who are losing their friends too. And I think you should consider all the schools you want to consider.”  
  
“Even NYADA?”  
  
This time it's Cooper who rolls his eyes. “Even NYADA. Even if they have a stupid ass brochure and name.”  
  
“I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” Blaine admits, leaning back into Cooper. Cooper easily folds his arms around his brother.  
  
“You don’t have to. Not yet. There’s time to figure it all out.”  
  
“I want Kurt in it though.”  
  
Cooper doesn’t even attempt to stop his smile. “I want Kurt in it for you too.”  
  
They’ll talk about this more later. They’ll discuss the options for college endlessly, until Blaine jams his fingers in his ears and sings _Teenage Dream_  at the top of his lungs while jumping up and down on the sofa.  
  
And then they’ll come to a decision, together.


	17. A Necessary Farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper has to say goodbye to Blaine.

Blaine is eighteen when he packs the last of his bowties and his sweaters, his books and his photographs, into cardboard moving boxes and seals them up with tape.  
  
There isn’t much to take in the end – mostly clothing, some personal items, and the basic necessities. His new dorm room on campus will provide for him the furniture he’ll need – a desk and a chair and a dresser - even if it’s cheap and used and can hardly be considered proper furniture at all. He’s lucky if it even all matches. And it’s not like his bed would fit in a standard, cramped dorm anyway. Besides, he’s already slept more nights than he ever wanted in that bed without Kurt; he really doesn’t mind sleeping in a new bed, one that isn’t heavy with the memory of Kurt’s body and the long-faded scent of his hair and his skin.  
  
And if he wants anything else to make his dorm feel less like an institution and more like a home, well he can buy those things in New York. He’s sure Kurt would love to take him shopping – to make a date of it. God how he’s missed their dates.  
  
Blaine doesn’t know his new roommate; he only has a name (Sean) and university-provided contact information that he hasn’t used. But he doesn’t want to start out on the wrong foot with his roommate by completely taking over their shared space with his Wicked poster (his birthday present mailed by Kurt and signed by the cast) and two hundred-some photographs of Kurt and Cooper and his friends from McKinley, and even a few of the Warblers. Blaine boarded at Dalton – he remembers what it’s like to get used to a new person in a close space, where tensions can run high and tempers can grow hot at the slightest provocations.  
  
Over the last two years he’s come leaps and bounds from the scared, broken boy who first walked through the grand doors of Dalton Academy with downcast eyes and fresh scars, and the betrayed young man who was kicked out of his home for daring to follow his heart. But still, he worries. How can he not? He knows it’s New York and things are  _different_  there than in small-town Ohio, but he doesn’t know his roommate. Not yet. He’s not going to hide who he is, he  _won’t_ , but he’s certainly not going to show up day one with his pride flag blazing and his boyfriend’s name tattooed across his heart.  
  
(Kurt forbade any thoughts or ideas of tattoos the moment Blaine turned eighteen. Blaine’s not going to tell him that he has several sketches hidden away in a box for when Kurt finally relents.)  
  
Cooper comes back into the bedroom from his latest trip carrying boxes of Blaine’s belongings down to the front door. The moving company is on the way and Cooper wants to be prepared for when they get there. He’d offered to drive Blaine’s things to New York for him, to make a road trip out of it, but Blaine refused.  
  
“You have classes to prep for, Coop. And that’s way too long a drive just to deliver my stuff for me,” Blaine had said.  
  
“It’s not about making a delivery, B,” Cooper said, and his arms already ached to know he wouldn’t be able to hold Blaine in them much longer. “And you know that.”  
  
Blaine knows Cooper’s not ready to let him go, to divide their common life. Cooper’s been alternating between mania and depression the last couple of weeks, and the mood swings got wilder the closer it got to Blaine’s departure. Some days he’d be on Blaine’s heels, plastered to him every waking moment of the day. Other days he’d lock himself away in his own bedroom, making excuses about a class syllabus or preparation or other nonsense that Blaine could see right through.  
  
Blaine gets it. He does. Cooper changed everything for him; he altered his whole life. For him. He moved back to Ohio after Blaine’s bashing to be closer to him, changed schools and everything, to be there for him however he could. And then he moved again when Blaine needed a new place to live. There’s nothing Blaine can ever do to repay that kind of sacrifice. He just hopes that Cooper knows, really understands, how grateful he is for everything that his brother has done for him, and continues to do for him.  
  
If he’s honest with himself, he’s not really ready to go either. His desire, his overwhelming need to get back to Kurt wars with the ache in the stomach to  _stay_ , to stay home with Cooper where he’s safe and comfortable and secure. He thinks about it sometimes, rescinding his acceptance to The Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and finding work in Lima. Maybe at the Lima Bean – they like him there well enough and he’s pretty sure they’d let him set up a piano in the back corner and play on Friday nights for tips. It’s a ridiculous flight of fantasy that he’s embarrassed to even consider for a moment, but he does consider it, late at night when he can’t sleep for the worry and the fear and the anticipation that gnaws a hole in his stomach.  
  
Those are the nights he misses Kurt the most, not that he doesn’t miss Kurt with every fiber of his being every moment of every day. But those nights, when his room is simultaneously too close and small, and altogether too big for just him, Blaine curls onto his side and imagines Kurt’s head on the pillow next to his. He imagines he can hear the steady thud of Kurt’s heart and the gentle huffs of his breath in the cold silence of the night.  
  
“OK, you have everything packed up? You’re absolutely sure?” Cooper asks, looking around the room with his hands on his hips.  
  
Despite the fact that all of his furniture is still there, Blaine’s bedroom feels horribly, achingly empty. The bed sits where it always has, with the same sheets and comforter that have always been there. They were some of the first things Cooper went out and bought when he took Blaine in. The bed in Blaine’s dorm is going to be much smaller than this one and will need new bedding. Cooper’s glad that Blaine will have something familiar to come home to when he visits. And the familiar blue sheets and plaid bedspread are comforting to Cooper too. He’s glad to be able to see them there whenever he walks past Blaine’s room, which he has to do to get to his own bedroom. It’s almost like he’ll be able to pretend that Blaine’s spending the night at Kurt’s. Almost.  
  
“If you ask me that one more time I’m going to punch you in the face,” Blaine says.  
  
“I’m just trying to be sure you’re not forgetting anything.” Cooper runs his hands through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. It’s still early in the morning, but the week’s been a hot and humid one and Cooper can feel the sweat gathering.  
  
“It’s not like you can drive home to get anything you’ve left behind.” If there’s more bite in his voice than he intended, well he can’t exactly be blamed.  
  
Cooper had offered to put Blaine up in an apartment, but Blaine had insisted on living in the dorms with all the other freshmen.  
  
“What kind of college experience would it be if I didn’t spend at least a year living in a drab, cramped room with three other guys I don’t know and probably won’t like?” Blaine had replied, with a cheeky grin.  
  
“Besides, Kurt and Rachel are getting their own apartment together for the new year. I’m sure I’ll be spending most of my time over there anyway when I’m not in class,” Blaine shrugged a little too carelessly. “My roommate will love me for that.”  
  
He’s taking with him, back to New York, the t-shirts that Kurt had sent him throughout the year. The ones that Kurt had worn for a few days and then mailed to him, tightly sealed so the fabric still smelled of his skin – his lotion and his cologne. Blaine wore them to bed every night until they no longer smelled of Kurt, only of himself, and Cooper forced him to wash them.  
  
Blaine can’t wait to be close to Kurt again, in every sense, not just the physical. He’s missed their conversations and their silences - the soul deep connection of their lives. But his body aches for the touch of Kurt’s hands and his lips are dry without his kisses. He hurts to bury his nose in the curve of Kurt’s neck and the crease of his hip and inhale deeply the scent of him, to pull it back into his pores where it belongs.  
  
He knew what a year apart meant, but he hadn’t known.  
  
Despite his naive promises of  _we’ll see each other every weekend_ , Kurt only managed to come back to Ohio a few times throughout the last year. The Hummel-Hudsons were never a wealthy family, and two boys in college at the same time, even with scholarships, put a strain on their budget, and it just wasn’t in the cards for Kurt to fly home every weekend. And as much as he wanted to, as much as he wished he could, even Cooper couldn’t exactly afford to send Blaine out there whenever the ache for Kurt grew desperate.  
  
And besides, both of them were in school. They had classes, homework, and exams, practices, rehearsals, and shows that required so much of their time and attention. Neither of them were going to sacrifice their education for a few frantic hours together.  
  
Of course there were hours-long Skype sessions and phone calls, late into the night or early in the morning. There were text messages every day, even if sometimes those messages were only “good morning” and “good night” and “I love you.” There were letters and postcards, all which Blaine saved in his dresser drawer, and Kurt kept in a little wooden box of mementos that Blaine gave to him before their final prom together. Kurt wears the key to the box every day on a chain around his neck, tucked underneath his clothing so it stays warm against his skin.  
  
Kurt came home for the first time since he’d left during Christmas break. Blaine had nearly vibrated right out his skin in anticipation of Kurt’s arrival for a full a week before. He’d coped by taking it upon himself to turn their home into a Christmas wonderland.  
  
Cooper had let Blaine go to town decorating their house – a massive Christmas tree, lights around the windows and along the eaves; wreaths and boughs, holly and bright red bows everywhere. And of course a sprig of mistletoe pinned above Blaine’s bed. Cooper had shaken his head and laughed when Blaine come home with the mistletoe cradled lovingly in his hands.  
  
“Take it to your room,” Cooper had said, pointing up the staircase, the railing of which was draped with Christmas boughs and twinkling lights. “Don’t think for one second I don’t know what the two of you are going to be doing just as soon as his plane lands. Just keep it to your room would you? For my sake.”  
  
Blaine hadn’t even had the decency to blush. He’d only grinned so broadly that his eyes disappeared and he fairly ran up the stars, singing _Baby It’s Cold Outside_  on the way.  
  
When Kurt finally showed up at Cooper’s house, a few hours after his plane landed (clearly having stopped at his parents’ house first), Cooper had stayed in the kitchen while Blaine answered the door. He’d heard the thud of Kurt’s overnight bag hitting the floor and the unmistakable crash of two bodies hitting the wall.  
  
It had taken a good twenty minutes before Kurt and Blaine untangled themselves and found their way to kitchen, hand-in-hand, walking so closely together that their shoulders bumped. Cooper was nearly blinded by the matching smiles on their faces.  
  
“Hey, Coop,” Kurt had said. As soon as they’d stopped walking Blaine had slipped his arm around Kurt’s waist and pulled him as close as possible.  
  
“Good to see you, Kurt.” Cooper had given him a hug, made a little awkward by Blaine’s refusal to move out of the way. “How’s New York treating you?”  
  
Kurt had opened his mouth to answer, but Blaine then had started pushing him back out of the kitchen, leaving Kurt spluttering and tripping a little.  
  
“We’ll talk later, Coop,” he’d said. “Kurt and I have quite a bit of catching up to do.” And then they were gone, and Cooper couldn’t help his laughter when he heard their footsteps running up the stairs and the slam of Blaine’s bedroom door as it closed behind them.  
  
He didn’t see them again for quite a few hours.  
  
Of course there were rough patches during the long year apart – vicious fights and petty arguments, about the time, the distance; the inevitable strain on their distance. And there were those two weeks when they didn’t speak a word to each other.  
  
The only time Cooper had seen Blaine as depressed as he’d been during those weeks was right after he’d been kicked out of their parents’ house. He hardly spoke; didn’t sing a note. He wouldn’t eat unless Cooper sat him down at the kitchen counter and nearly force-fed him. He went to class and did his homework, but Cooper could see that he wasn’t there, not really. His skin was pale and waxy; his shoulders were slumped constantly. The light was gone from his eyes.  
  
Cooper knew there was nothing he could do to ease Blaine’s pain. He could only be there for him until he and Kurt worked it out, whatever it was that had happened between them. He never did find out what that particular argument had been about. Despite everything they’ve been through together, as brothers, as a family, Cooper knows that there are some things even he isn’t privy to. Cooper understands that there are things that exist between Blaine and Kurt alone, and he’s ok with that.  
  
“Hey Coop?”  
  
Cooper turns from where he’s been staring blankly at Blaine’s bookshelf to find Blaine standing next to him. He’s got comfortable travel clothing on and in his hands his their grandfather’s pocket watch – the one that Cooper gave him before he left Ohio for school; the one he’s been wearing every day since.  
  
“Don’t you dare give that back to me,” Cooper says, more harshly than he intended. If he even thinks about it, thinks about taking that watch back from Blaine, he’ll start crying and he may never stop.  
  
“But,”  
  
“I’m keeping your stupid pink bowtie and you’re keeping the watch. That’s final.”  
  
Blaine swallows thickly, blinking back tears as he clips the chain on and tucks the watch deep into his pocket, where it belongs.  
  
“I was going to bring my Coop-bear with me, but…” Blaine trails off, smiling sheepishly. The Build-a-Bear he’d made with Cooper all those years ago sits on top of his bookcase.  
  
“Yes that’s not exactly the first impression you want to make with your new roommates, is it?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“It’s ok,” Cooper glances over at the bear and he thinks of one the one that sits on the shelf in his closet. “I’ll take good care of him.”  
  
Blaine’s eye catches the clock and his breath sticks in his throat. “It’s – it’s time to get going,” he says. Cooper nods. Blaine takes one last look around his bedroom before turning and heading back down the stairs.  
  
Cooper turns out the light as he follows Blaine, but he leaves the door open.  
  
***  
  
The drive to the airport is strangely quiet, and all at once too short and painfully long. The radio is on, but for once neither of them are singing along. But Blaine’s fingers tap restlessly against his knee and his shoulders are so tense Cooper’s own muscles ache.  
  
The airport looms large in front of them as Cooper drives towards the departure terminals and the sight of it makes his stomach clench painfully. The only other building he has such a visceral reaction to is the hospital, though the reasons couldn’t be any more different.  
  
He finds a spot right in front of Blaine’s terminal and pulls into it, putting the car in park. He sits for a moment, holding the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip before unfastening his seatbelt and climbing out of the car.  
  
Blaine’s got his messenger bag and a carry-on with him – a set of clothes in case his other belongings get delayed on their way to New York. Kurt is meeting him at JFK in New York when he lands and really, he needs nothing else.  
  
And then Blaine is standing on the curb in front of the terminal, carry-on resting next to him. He opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it again.  
  
“Well,” Cooper says, and any other words he might have wanted to say stick fast in his throat. He’s almost glad that he’s no longer allowed to go with Blaine all the way to the boarding gate. He’s not sure he’d be able to let Blaine go if he saw him standing at those doors, boarding pass in hand, about to turn his back and board a plane.  
  
Blaine launches himself at Cooper, almost knocking his suitcase over, and wrapping his arms as tightly around his brother as he possibly can. He buries his face in Cooper’s shoulder and feels the tears, the ones he’s been holding back all day, spring hot and painful to his eyes. He lets them fall.  
  
“Coop,” he chokes out, and his voice is thick and wet with emotion. His chest aches and his stomach is clenching. He can’t do this. He can’t go.  
  
“I know.” Cooper clutches his baby brother to his chest maybe a little too tightly. Blaine probably can’t breathe and Cooper doesn’t care. He’s not going to be able to hold him again for months.  _Months_. It’s been two years since he’s gone more than a couple of days without giving Blaine a hug, or resting his hand on his shoulder as reassurance to them both. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Blaine’s probably not going to be home again until Christmas; this is Cooper’s last hug until then and goddammit he’s going to make it a good one.  
  
The fact that he’s crying in public outside of an airport hardly registers at all.  
  
“I love you Blainers. So goddamn much. And I’m so proud of you it hurts.”  
  
“Love you too, Coop.” Blaine finally pulls back and away. He’s a bit of a mess, face wet and blotchy, eyes red-rimmed, and lashes clumped with tears.  
  
“Oh come here,” Cooper cups Blaine’s cheeks and wipes the still falling tears away. “You’re going to be crying the moment you see Kurt. Give yourself a break until then.”  
  
Blaine hiccups and laughs, wiping his running nose on the back of his hand. It’s kind of disgusting, and he really doesn’t care.  
  
“It’s not goodbye forever, is it?” Blaine asks, and Cooper nearly breaks down again. He swallows down the sob that threatens to burst from him. He remembers, remembers so clearly saying those words to Blaine all those years ago, when he was the one going off to the college, leaving a beloved brother behind.  
  
“No,” Cooper says. “No it’s really not.”


	18. Epilogue: Reaching the Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper stands up for his brother on the biggest day of his life.

Cooper is thirty-four when he stands up for his little brother on one of the most important days of his life.  
  
He stands behind Blaine as his brother looks at himself in the long mirror again. He looks fantastic in his simple, elegant tuxedo, with the pink carnation tucked into his lapel. Despite the similarity, he doesn’t look like he’s going to prom, not at all.  
  
“Are you ready for this?” Cooper asks, picking lint that isn’t there off the fabric. Kurt is in the room next door, getting ready with Finn, his own carnation bright and pretty against the black fabric of his jacket.  
  
“I’m not nervous,” Blaine says as he turns away from the mirror. Cooper reaches out and straightens his brother’s perfectly straight bowtie again and smoothes the unwrinkled fabric. He can’t seem to stop fussing with Blaine.  
  
“You’re not?” Cooper is having a hard time believing that. He’s sweating a little in his expensive tux and his hands keep trembling a little, and he’s not even the one getting married.  
  
“No. Not one bit. It’s all been leading to this,” Blaine waves his hand around the room as if he can encompass the last ten years of his life. “Everything. Every day since that first one. Since the staircase at Dalton. It was all for this moment. Right now.” Blaine stops and smiles - a warm, secret smile that makes Cooper’s heart clench to see. He can’t believe that after everything, his brother found the happiness that he did.  
  
“So no. I’m not nervous. I’m ready.”  
  
Cooper gathers Blaine into his arms, as he’s done so many times throughout their lives, uncaring that he’s probably wrinkling the jacket he’s spent all afternoon fussing with. He’s careful, though, not to mess with Blaine’s hair. It looks perfect today, and he’s not sending Blaine off to marry Kurt with ruffled hair.  
  
He’s having a hard time understanding that he’s about to watch his baby brother get married.  _Married_. They are still so young, but they’ve been together for a decade - a full, solid decade. They’ve made it through high school and college, first jobs and callbacks. They’ve made it through rejections and staring roles; through Blaine’s first Tony nomination and Kurt’s first win.  
  
But even through all of that, Cooper still sees in Blaine his baby brother. He sees a little boy in a too-big bowtie with a pillowcase tired around his neck as he jumps around on his bed, fencing foil in hand as he attacks his pillows. He sees the young kid who was so bruised and broken for so long, but somehow managed pulled himself out of the darkness and become the bright, wonderful, loving, and  _loved_ man that he is today. Cooper could not be prouder of him if he tried.  
  
He wonders if this is what a father feels like.  
  
“All right then,” Cooper says, finally pulling back. He can already feel the tears ready to flow and he doesn’t know if he’s going to make through the ceremony before completely losing it.   
  
“Let’s get you married.”  
  
It’s a small ceremony, just friends and family. Everyone, including Cooper, who’s known Kurt just as long as Blaine, had expected Kurt to go all-out for this wedding. Blaine had been prepared to step back and let Kurt’s anal-retentive attention to detail take over. But he hadn’t, not at all.  
  
“All I want is you,” Kurt had said, touching the pile of wedding magazines that Blaine had brought home for him two weeks after their engagement. “As long as it’s you standing across from me vowing to be mine for the rest of our lives, then I’m happy. In this, everything else is just the details.”  
  
They’d chosen The Foundry in Queens for their venue. Kurt had fallen in love with the exposed brick walls and the way it contrasted with the modern steel accents, and Blaine was completely taken with the Greenhouse and its skylight ceiling and living ivy that wrapped around the space. Kurt also appreciated that the Foundry provided their own caterers, florists, furniture rentals, and musicians.  
  
“Less work for me,” Kurt had said when they’d visited the space, running his fingers along the rough brick. “Means I can spend more time more time with you instead of planning this, basking in our pre-wedding glow instead of drowning in floral arrangements and cake flavors.”  
  
What Kurt was heavily involved with was the ceremony itself.  
  
There are no groomsmen, no flower girls, no aisle to walk down. There is no altar. It’s just them and their friends and their family, and that’s all that matters.  
  
Finn is standing up for Kurt, while Cooper stands for Blaine, each of them looking rather dashing in their tuxes. And Puck, Noah Puckerman, of all people, is officiating. Kurt and Blaine’s marriage will be legalized once they sign the papers; this is just the show, the party, and Puck had made it clear the moment he’d heard of their impending nuptials that he would be the one to see them through this.  
  
Blaine and Cooper’s parents sit with Kurt and Finn’s, and even though they will probably never be one completely happy, intertwined family, Mrs. Anderson accepts the package of Kleenex that Carole offers her, and Mr. Anderson accepts the hearty handshake that Burt gives him when they find their seats.  
  
A small orchestra plays a soft, sweet little melody that Blaine wrote two days after Kurt woke him up in the middle of the night with a kiss, a question, and a pair of matching engagement rings as Kurt and Blaine approach each other. Blaine’s smile can be seen from space and Kurt’s eyes are so luminous Cooper can see them shining from where he stands. Finn wraps Blaine up a giant hug, and Cooper does the same to Kurt. They are all brothers now, as if they haven’t already been this last decade. But now it’s kind of official. Cooper feels little cracks in his heart that he hadn’t even known were there seal over completely.  
  
Puck tells stories about McKinley that sends everyone into fits of laughter before delving deep with his own experience of their relationship, how he saw it grow and flourish and become what it is. Cooper watches as Kurt and Blaine stare at each other throughout the ceremony with those matching, ridiculous looks of love and adoration that they’ve been giving each other since day one.  
  
“Now,” Puck says. “Because they can’t just stick to the script, Kurt and Blaine have written their own vows. So everyone get your tissues out because I’m sure this is going get really sappy really fast.”  
  
Kurt reaches out and takes Blaine’s hands in his, caressing his knuckles with his thumbs. Blaine’s smile is so huge his eyes are disappearing and so bright it hurts to look at. Cooper is already tearing up and Kurt hasn’t even said anything yet.  
  
“Blaine, growing up, I never thought that this would happen to me, that I would be standing here with the man I love pledging my life to his. I never even imagined that someone like you could happen to me. I was lost – scared and alone – when you found me. You saved me, and I’m pretty sure I saved you too.  
  
I know you were the one to sing it first, but you are my teenage dream. You are everything I never thought I would have in my life – a hand to hold in the dark, a heart to dance with even when there’s no music playing. You are love and laughter and hope, and I am eternally grateful to you for giving those things to me. I love you, more than words can ever say.”   
  
Kurt’s voice is strong, full of conviction throughout his vows, and the tears are streaming down Blaine’s face. Cooper doesn’t even attempt to hide that he’s crying. Across from him, Finn is wiping at his own eyes. Cooper can’t even look out to see how their parents are all doing. He hopes Puck is doing ok.  
  
Kurt takes the wedding band from Finn and slides it onto Blaine’s ring finger. He lifts Blaine’s hand and presses his lips to the band, smiling up at his husband, his  _husband_. Blaine’s breath hitches in his chest.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine begins, once he’s gotten himself under control enough to speak. “You did save me. I wasn’t really living before you. I just passing through life, a ghost, a shadow, eyes to the ground, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. Until one day someone called out to me and I looked up. And there you were. There you were.  
  
I didn’t know, then, what you would mean to me. How could I have known? But so quickly you became everything to me. You are my best friend and my lover; you are my heart and my soul and everything in between. You were the only one for me, from the very beginning, and you will remain the only one. I have loved you as long as I’ve been able, and I will continue to love you, until the end.”  
  
Blaine accepts the matching wedding band from Cooper, who is beyond relieved that he doesn’t drop it, and fits it around Kurt’s finger. Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and presses a kiss to the ring, just as Kurt had done. He can’t wait for the feel of the band under his lips to become utterly, wholly familiar.  
  
There is a pause while Blaine wipes at his eyes, and Kurt wipes his, and Puck has to take a moment to compose himself before he can finish the ceremony.  
  
“Well, I did warn you there would be tears. Let’s finish this off so we can get to the food and the dancing. By the powers vested in me, from absolutely no one, I now pronounce you – wait for it, this is going to sound so awesome – husband and husband. You may now make out with each other while the rest of us watch.”  
  
Cooper laughs and applauds with everyone else as Kurt wraps Blaine up and bends him into a sweet dip as he presses a warm, loving kiss to his mouth.  
  
Tonight, they’ll dance and sing and wine and dine at the reception. They’ll all stay out way too late, even though it’s an early Friday evening in October and no one has any obligations in the morning. They’ll laugh and love and catch up with friends they haven’t seen in a while. Cooper will deliver a speech before dinner that gets the tears flowing again.  
  
That night, as he watches Kurt and Blaine cradle each other close during their first slow dance together as  _husbands_ , alone on the dance floor, swaying slow and sweet to the music, the stars shining over them through the skylight ceiling, Cooper thinks that maybe, just maybe, he did an OK job being an Anderson.  
  
He thinks that if this is the outcome, then maybe he succeeded at being the best brother he could possibly be.  
  
And whatever else happens in his life, that’s enough.


End file.
